The Fog
by Silversaphire96
Summary: A powerful thunderstorm unleashes a fog that envelops the small town of Lima. Dozens are trapped inside a supermarket not knowing the horrors that lie outside. Among the stranded are Rachel, Quinn and Finn. A/U. Punk!Quinn. Finn!Bashing. Suspense. Faberry.
1. The Storm

**The Fog **

**AN: I based this story off of a book a recently read, **_**The Mist by Stephen King. **_**If you've read it, you'll probably see it's the same but all Faberry-d up. This will be set at the end of summer vacation, before senior year, everything after will be AU. If my timeline is correct, Quinn is Punk!Quinn during this but nobody from school has seen her yet. There might be some spoilers in there so, if you haven't seen all of the episodes, you have been warned.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, or anything pertaining to it. I only own a copy of **_**The Mist by Stephen King **_**and a very Faberry imagination. **

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 1: The Storm**

**Quinn's POV:**

On the night that the worst heat wave in Ohio history finally broke, the entire city of Lima was lashed with the most vicious thunderstorms I had ever seen.

I sat on a patio chair in my backyard idly flipping through a book I wasn't really reading, just enjoying the sun. For an hour before, the air had been utterly still. Not even the leaves on the trees that resided in the forest on the other side of our backyard were rustling. The heat was practically solid. I looked towards the horizon that was slowly being consumed by enormous purple thunderclouds and sighed; I would have to go back inside soon. Back inside, where my mother was rigorously preparing herself to go to another one of her_ book club _meetings_. _I found out what my mother's definition of a book club was when she hosted one at our house. Apparently getting inebriated and trash talking your ex- husband was what passed as a book club meeting now a days, at least for my mother. I had thought that once the divorce was final and my father was out of the house the relationship with my mother would stop being nonexistent. Turns out it was all wishful thinking. My new sense of style and neon pink hair had only served to direct disapproving head shakes my way. I wanted to believe that was better than nothing but it wasn't. I shook away those thoughts and reached for my water bottle. It was empty.

The air began to move, jerkily at first, moving the leaves on the trees, making them rustle and shake and then still. It began to freshen and grew steady, first cooling the perspiration on my body and then seeming to freeze it.

That was when I saw the silver veil approaching with the storm clouds. It blotted out the hills in the horizon then headed straight for me. The birds suddenly stopped chirping. I stood up and squinted at the horizon, trying to see if it was just a trick of the light. After a few failed attempts at trying to prove it was just my mind playing tricks on me, I decided it was time to head inside.

I picked up my water bottle and my book and went in through the sliding glass doors that lead into the living room. I slid the door shut on its track and paused for another look out. The silver veil was three-quarters of the way across the forest. It had resolved itself into a crazily spinning teacup between the lowering black sky and the tops of the trees. Watching the dark storm clouds roll closer was strangely hypnotic. They were nearly directly on top of me when lightning flashed so brightly that it printed everything on my eyes in negative for thirty seconds afterward. The telephone started ringing shrilly snapping me out of my thoughts. I turned to see my mother hurrying down the stupidly long staircase.

"I'll get it!" I quickly said and walked over to the landline. I was about to pick it up when it stopped ringing. Shrugging, I turned and looked back at my mother who was now standing where I had been a few seconds prior.

"I don't think it would be safe to go out tonight. A storm's coming," I told her nonchalantly as I leaned into the couch, waiting for her response.

"I'll be the judge of that," she murmured, barley acknowledging my presence. A vision suddenly came to me- the kind that are reserved exclusively for when you're angry with an adult, but can't really do anything about it- of the glass door blowing in with a low, hard coughing sound and sending jagged arrows of glass into my mother's cosmetically altered face. The horrors of the Inquisition are nothing compared to what my mind can conjure up with all of my repressed feelings. I shook away my thoughts once more and along with it, the foreboding feeling in my gut.

"Maybe you shouldn't stand so close to the glass. The wind's picking up." She spared me a startled glance, as if she had been partially awakened from a deep dream. I discreetly rolled my eyes and headed towards the stairs.

I was almost halfway up the stairs when the wind came. It was as if the house had taken off like a 747. It was high, breathless whistling, sometimes deepening to a bass roar before glissading up to a whooping scream. I paused in my ascent and thought for a moment. Sighing, I turned and headed back down the stairs. Sparing a glance at my mother who was still staring through the glass, I filled up my bottle with more water. Scrambling through the cabinets, a strange thought flitted through my head. Flashlights are funny things, you know. You lay them by just in case, not knowing when there might be a power outage. And when the time comes, they hide.

Ha, good ol' Jack Daniel's, I sighed shaking my head. My mother had drunk half of it, and the bottle was slightly hidden by random house wife magazines.

I shuffled them around a bit and behind the new Martha Stewart issue found some spare batteries. Just as I made to grab them, a streak of lightning flashed across the gloomy sky, illuminating the dining room like an oversized lightning bug. I moved the batteries to my left hand with my book and water and flicked on the flashlight in my right.

"I'm going downstairs," I said, but this time I had to shout to make myself heard. I was eerily calm all things considering. I turned and headed towards the basement just as thunder whacked mammoth planks together directly over the house. I flinched a little and looked back to see that my mother had been snapped out of her daze and was following a few feet behind me. I didn't comment, just handed her the other flashlight and kept heading towards the basement. Up ahead I let my mother walk in first.

I had to have one more look at the storm.

I looked back through the glass door but I couldn't see twenty yards into the forest; it was complete turmoil outside. Hesitantly, I joined my mother downstairs.

The basement was strategically made into another living room. I sat down on the couch opposite my mother, I listened to the storm roar and bash at our house and began to read by flashlight. It was oddly calming. About twenty minutes later we heard a ripping, rending crash as one of the big pines went down nearby. Then there was a lull. I was startled when my mother spoke.

"Is it over?" she asked. I thought it over.

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe only for a while."

We went upstairs, both of us carrying a flashlight. It was too dark to see what damage had been done around the house. We sat in the living room, listened to the wind, and looked at the lightning. About half an hour later it began to crank up again. For three weeks the temperature had been over ninety, and on six of those twenty-one days the National Weather Service station had reported temperatures of over one hundred degrees. Strange weather. Strange enough that I overheard many non-believers around town talk about global warming. And of course, the end of the world.

The second squall wasn't so hard, but we heard the crash of several trees weakened by the first onslaught. As the wind began to die down again, I head back to the basement with my mother not far behind.

My mother had fallen asleep on one of the armchairs by the time the last squall came at around ten o'clock. It was bad. The wind howled just as loudly as it had the first time, and the lightning seemed to be flashing all around me even though there was only one small, bulletproof window in the basement. I was lying down on the couch, book long forgotten by then when I heard the splintering crash of more trees falling. I winced a little.

I had loved those trees.

I few moments later there was a splintering crash from upstairs- the glass door. So maybe my vision earlier hadn't been so crazy after all. My mother, who had by then been sleeping deeply, woke up with a little shriek. She looked around dazedly for a few seconds then realized the same thing I had a few moments ago. She looked at me with a slight hint of panic.

"The rain will come in," she said. "It'll ruin the furniture." I looked at her; she was still half asleep so I figured I'd amuse her.

"If it does, it does. Everything's insured, isn't it?"

"That doesn't make it any better," she said in an upset scolding voice. Apparently not _that _asleep.

"Shhh," I said. "Go back to sleep."

"No." she said stubbornly, and five minutes later she did.

I stayed awake for another half hour with my flashlight for company, listening to the thunder walk and talk outside. I pointed my flashlight towards the ceiling, the glowing golden light making me smile as it reminded me of a certain argyle-wearing diva that had an affinity for gold stars. I allowed myself to indulge in those thoughts that I rarely let run free at the forefront of my mind. I did a lot of thinking this summer and it not only resulted in my drastic change of appearance but also aided in my acknowledgment and acceptance of the feelings I have been harboring for one Rachel Berry for who knows how long. Suddenly the impulsive hostility I had felt towards her made sense. I was frustrated and confused at what she made me feel, which lead to me taking it out on her. The reevaluation of my feelings began as soon as Finnept had single handedly lost us Nationals with his stupid attempt at romancing Rachel. As soon as it happened I had felt like someone had punched my stomach, _hard, _causing all of the air to expel from my lungs_._ I knew that feeling; I had felt it before but never as strong. I was jealous, and as soon as I named the feeling I knew that I wasn't jealous of Rachel. My smile dimmed when I remembered what had happened at Nationals and that Rachel would probably get back together with the Jolly Green Giant. If she hadn't already. I was already formulating a plan to try and woo her. It was a work in progress that had made…no progress. I wasn't exactly sure how to approach her anymore after everything I did to her. The only thing I could think of was surprising her with a mind blowing kiss so that I wouldn't have to explain myself first. But just the thought of talking to her, let alone _kissing _her makes me blush like a strawberry and my thoughts turn into something along the lines of _aghjbsfjhgdsf._

The storm was fading now, with no sign of a new squall coming in. I went back upstairs, leaving my mother on the chair, and looked into the living room. Where the sliding glass door had been, there was now a jagged hole stuffed with birch leaves. It was the top of the old tree that had stood closest to our house for as long as I could remember. Looking at its top, now visiting in our living room, I could understand what my mother had meant by saying insurance didn't make it any better. That had been my favorite tree. Whenever mom and dad would get particularly loud when they fought I would go outside and climb it and spend hours reading on it, hidden between its branches until the yelling stopped. Big chunks of glass on the rug reflected my flashlight over and over. I reminded myself to warn my mother in the morning.

I went downstairs again. I fell asleep on the longest couch. I had a dream I saw God walking across the forest, a God so gigantic that above his waist He was lost in a clear blue sky. In the dream I could hear the rending crack and splintering of breaking trees as God stamped the forest into the shape of His footsteps. He was coming closer to our house, all the trees that stood in his way bursting into white flame like lightning, and soon the smoke covered everything. The smoke covered everything like a fog.

**oO0Oo**

**AN: What do you think? Should I continue?**


	2. How Everything Started

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 2: How Everything Started.**

**Quinn's POV:**

"Holy _sh-"_

"Language Quinnie!" my mother scolded, I rolled my eyes.

We were standing on our front porch looking out at all of the damage the storm had caused. A few of our neighbors were outside as well, inspecting the damage that had been inflicted on their property. The morning was bright and as clear as a bell. The sky, which had been a mushy, hazy color during the heat wave, had regained a deep, crisp blue that was nearly autumnal. There was a light breeze, making the fallen leaves that covered almost everything move back and forth in the driveway. Not far from where we were standing there was a steady hissing noise, and in the grass there was what you might at first have taken for a writhing bundle of snakes. The power lines leading to our house had fallen in an untidy tangle about twenty feet to our left and lay in a burned patch of grass. They were twisting lazily and spitting. If the trees and grass hadn't been so completely damped down by torrential rains, the house might have gone up in flames. As it was, there was only that black patch where the wires had touched directly.

"What are we going to do about that?" I asked pointing towards the fallen power lines.

"Nothing, wait for the power company to come around," she said with a sigh and then walked back inside. I decided to further inspect the damage. I walked across the grass, carefully avoiding the power lines and started down the street.

It was worst than I had imagined. Trees had fallen across the road in four different places, one of them small, two of them middling, and one old baby that must have been five feet through the middle. Moss was crusted onto it like a moldy corset.

Branches, some half-stripped of their leaves, lay everywhere in jackstraw profusion. I decided to be of some use and started tossing the smaller branches into a pile.

Two hours later I walked back into the house covered in a light sheen of sweat.

"_Quinnie!" _I heard my mother call me. I walked into the kitchen and went straight to the fridge for a bottle of water.

"What?"

"I need you to head out to the market for me. We're out of limes and olives. Also…well, let me make you a list." Her words were slightly slurred and I immediately knew she had already gotten into the liquor cabinet. I didn't even have time to protest, two hours out in the hot sun can really slow a person's reflexes down. Or maybe it's just me…

She scurried out of the kitchen and came back with a list of items by the time I had downed two water bottles. She handed it over with my car keys and a small wad of cash. I was promptly hurried out of the door.

"Don't forget the salt!" I heard her yell as I climbed into my Volkswagen Passat and I just had to roll my eyes. It was on the list, how could I forget?

I fiddled with the radio while at a red light and thought it odd that most of the stations were off the air, but I quickly shrugged it off when the light turned green.

The Lima Washateria in the shopping center was closed, it being impossible to run a coin-op laundry without electricity, but both the Lima Pharmacy and the Federal Foods Supermarket were open. The parking lot was pretty full, and as always in the middle of summer, a lot of the cars had out-of-state plates. Little knots of people stood here and there in the sun, noodling about the storm.

I saw Mrs. Pepper, she of the swamp animals and the stump-water lore. She sailed into the supermarket decked out in an extravagant canary yellow pantsuit. A purse that looked like a misshapen red pepper was slung over one forearm. Mrs. Pepper kept the Lima Antiquary (which is basically a fancy way of saying junk shop). In one of the shadowy, dusty back rooms, stuffed owls with gold-ringed eyes spread their wings forever as their feet endlessly grasped varnished logs; stuffed raccoons stood in a trio around a "stream" that was a long fragment of dusty mirror; and one moth-eaten wolf, which was foaming sawdust instead of saliva around the muzzle, snarled a creepy eternal snarl.

I went in there once and found out I don't particularly fancy taxidermy. Never again.

An idiot on a Yamaha roared past me, missing my front bumper by a few scant inches. He wore a denim jacket, mirror glasses, and no helmet.

"Ass," I muttered angrily. I circled the parking lot once, looking for a good space. There were none. I was just resigning myself to a long walk from the far end of the lot when I got lucky. A lime green Cadillac the size of a small cabin cruiser was easing out of a slot in the rank closest to the market's doors. The moment it was gone, I slid into the space. I walked sluggishly to the market, just in time to see an amusing little incident. An elderly couple walked toward the IN door, chatting together. And still chatting, they walked right into it. They stopped talking and the women squawked her surprise. They stared at each other comically. Then they laughed, and the old guy pushed the door open for his wife with some effort- those electric-eye doors are heavy- and they went in. When the electricity goes off, it catches you in a hundred different ways. I smiled.

I pushed the door open myself and the first thing I noticed was the lack of air-conditioning. Usually in the summer they have it cranked up high enough to give you frostbite if you stay in the market more than an hour.

Like most modern markets, the Federal was constructed like a Skinner box*****- modern marketing techniques turn all costumers into white rats. The stuff you really needed like bread, milk, meat, beer, and frozen dinners, were all on the far side of the store. To get there you had to walk past all the impulse items known to modern society-everything from Cricket lighters to rubber dog bones.

I grabbed a cart and walked toward the fruit-and-vegetable aisle that was just beyond the IN door. I looked up from my mother's shopping list and saw the old lady who had run into the door, she was examining grapefruits. Her husband had produced a net sack to store purchases in. I threaded my way through the aisles past half-loaded carriages and browsing shoppers while I stared at my mother's list. _Why in the world does she need cucumber seeds? Do they even sell cucumber seeds here?_

I bumped into someone and muttered a quick apology. I was about to turn back around, still puzzled by my mother's odd list, when I heard a high pitched, _"Quinn?"_

I know that voice. I looked up and immediately beamed.

"Rachel!"

"Quinn?" she said a little less high pitched, but still loudly.

"_Rachel," _I teased her. She just stared and I started to get self-conscious.

"What?" I finally asked.

"Y-your…What did-what?" She sputtered. It was disconcerting because I'd never heard Rachel Berry stumble over her words. _Ever._

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" I asked warily. She blinked a few times and cleared her throat, composing herself.

"I apologize for my vocal blunder Quinn but your new look took me a little by surprise," she said smiling a bit, but with an odd look on her adorable face. _What was she talking about again?_

She must've seen my confused look because she waved vaguely towards my head and it clicked. Of course! How could I possible forget my new look? _Her eyes are just so freaking mesmerizing!_ I shook my head, _no time for that right now_. _What was she saying…_

"Oh, _that, _I'm just trying something…new," I ended lamely and looked down blushing. Freaking _blushing! _I mean, I couldn't exactly tell her that I had finally found myself after being depressed for two weeks, and that it turns out that the 'real me' is completely and utterly infatuated with her. That wasn't exactly a great way to start a conversation with someone after not seeing them for almost two months. I had spent most of my summer trying to figure out a way to talk to her and now here she was, Rachel Berry in all her magnificent glory and I _still _had no idea what I wanted to say to her. I rocked awkwardly on the balls of my feet and gripped the handle bar of my cart tighter while trying to avoid eye contact.

"I like it," she said in a soft tone that had me looking up so fast I'm surprised I didn't get whiplash. She was smiling lightly and I almost did double take. I blushed harder and cleared my throat.

"Y-you do?" I asked. Now _I _was the one squeaking. She nodded her head and I beamed. _Well this is going better than I expected. _She looked a little surprised at my reaction but beamed right back until we heard a commotion towards the back of the aisle. We looked over to see an incredibly annoyed looking Kurt standing with his arms crossed glaring at who I assumed was Finn, who was on the floor completely covered in Jell-o and instant pudding packages with only his hands and feet sticking out. I stifled a laugh when I heard Rachel sigh beside me.

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself Quinn, I've had to deal with their shenanigans all week!" Rachel said in an annoyed tone and poked my stomach.

"Hey!" I said swatting her hand away when she went to repeat her actions. I started giggling when I saw that she was trying to hold in her laughter just like I was. She started giggling and in a few seconds we were both hunched over laughing until what she had said registered. I sobered up pretty quickly and gasped for air.

"Wait, what do you mean all week?" I asked. If she was back with together with Finn then surely she would have spent the _entire _summer with him, not just the past week, right? She stopped laughing immediately and gave me a weird look.

"My dads went to Arizona because my uncle got into some legal problems so I'm staying with Kurt until Sunday," she said and averted her eyes. Kurt… which basically means Kurt _and _Finn. I felt a pang of irrational jealousy hit my lower stomach so I quickly averted my eyes.

"Oh," I said.

"I-It's not what you think Quinn- I mean it's," my eyebrow involuntarily arched as I watched Rachel fumble over her words again, but mostly because she was trying to explain herself to _me…_not that I minded…_at all._

"Its fine Rachel," I said and tried to smile. She had been about to say something else when Kurt interrupted.

"Rachel! We need a little help over here!" He yelled across the aisle. I looked over and saw him trying to help Finn out of the mountain of packages. I smirked. _How does that even happen?_

"I can't deal with _that _alone, you're coming with me," Rachel said and before I could protest she was wheeling my cart towards Kurt. I was left with no choice but to follow. As we got closer we heard muffled yelling coming from the mountain and Kurt just looked up at Rachel and rolled his eyes. His eyes landed on me and widened.

"_Quinn! _What happened to you?_"_ he shrieked. I blushed and awkwardly waved at him. Rachel reached over and smacked his arm.

"Kurt! There is no need to be rude," she whisper yelled. That seemed to knock him out of his shocked state and he shook his head.

"Sorry Quinn, you just look so…different," he said blushing.

"So I've been told," I replied with a smirk. I looked over at Rachel and saw her blush adorably. She cleared her throat.

"Yes, well now that we have all of _that _cleared up. Quinn, give me a hand," she said and grabbed one of Finn's feet. I didn't really want to touch his feet…or him _at all_ but Rachel was already pouting because I was taking too long and well damn, how could I say no to that? I grabbed his other foot and we all gave a sharp tug; he immediately slid out from under the mountain and started sputtering. One of the Jell-o packages had burst open and dusted his face in green color. I proceeded to laugh my ass off.

"_Q-Quinn_?" Finn asked, still sputtering.

"Are you alright Finn?" I heard Rachel ask him. I gasped for air and giggled when Rachel smacked my arm.

"It's not funny Quinn! He could be seriously injured," she scolded me but I could see she was making a conscious effort not to laugh.

"He's not injured; it wasn't even that bad of on accident. I mean, he's a football player for Pete's sake! He's probably received a lot worse injuries than a few jell-o packages to the head," I said smirking.

"You're fine aren't you, Green Giant?" I teased him and poked him with the tip of my shoe. He grumbled something and stood up dusting the powder off. He wiped the dust out of his eyes and they landed on me.

"What did you do to your hair?" He shrieked. I winced and replied. _How have I not noticed how annoying his voice is?_

"Nice to see you too, Hudson," he blushed and I noticed that it wasn't as adorable as when Rachel does it, he just looked like a misshapen tomato. It was silent for a beat.

"Ok, so Quinn here was just telling me how she needs help finding something so we'll just meet you guys at the register," Rachel said breaking the awkward silence. She walked off with my cart and again and I'm, _again,_ left with no choice but to follow her. I ran a little to catch up to her and kept pace as she led us over to the next aisle.

"So, what are you here for?" she asked.

"What?"

"What had you planned on purchasing here today?" she rephrased and gave me a small smirk. I blushed.

"Oh…I-um, e-everything on that list," I said and pointed to the list that was in the cart. She reached down for it and read it over.

"Cucumber seeds?" she asked skeptically.

"Yeah…I don't know. I was just as confused by that one," I said, smiling because I got through a sentence without stuttering too much. I mean, _really. _I don't think I have _ever_ stuttered this much, or at all in any of the conversations we've ever had! Then again, I didn't realize I'm in love with her until a few weeks ago…_stupid blushing! _She smiled.

"Give a town a natural disaster and they turn squirrel," she said and proceeded to sweep her arm in a dramatic gesture indicating the hordes of people that were frantically moving around the store.

"Guess you're right."

"Aren't I always," she said with a smirk and pushed the cart towards the canned-food aisle. I smiled again and followed. I never expected Rachel and I to get along so well, but then again I had never given her a chance. Now that I finally accepted the olive branch that she's been extending (or beating me with) since we met, I'm hoping we can become friends…maybe more, but that comes later…_hopefully._

We're almost through the entire list when I just _had _to ask.

"So…are you and Finn…?" I asked casually as I inspected a container of salt. I felt her eyes on me but I couldn't find it in myself to look up.

"What, no!" she exclaimed. "Why would you think that?" I finally looked up and she had a weird scrutinizing look on her face that made me look back at the salt container.

"Well, you know…with what he did at nationals I just thought-"

"Barbra, _no!_ Did you seriously think I would get back together with him after he pulled that _stunt _that lost us Nationals? Granted, we were horribly unprepared and _really_, did we think that we could just show up, write, arrange and choreograph two win-worthy numbers and compete against show choirs that had undoubtedly been rehearsing and fine-tuning their routines all year long? In retrospect, I now see that that was a bit hubristic of us, but I digress! No, I have not gotten back together with Finn nor will I seek a relationship with him any time soon because after what he pulled at nationals I can't shake the feeling that he's plotting to destroy my inevitable Broadway career with Mr. Shuester and besides, our time has come and gone. I don't really feel the intrigue I felt when I first heard him sing because really, when you get past his _kind-of-ok_ voice there really isn't much else there. I don't know if you've noticed, I mean you probably have, you dated him too but he's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box and not to mention he's actually a bit rude when you pay attention to what he's saying," she takes a deep breath and I shake myself out of my Rachel-induced haze long enough to stop her from working herself into a frenzy_. _I mean, I could just let her continue because to be perfectly honest I was staring at her mouth the entire time because _God_ _knows _I've missed her voice but I caught the gist of what she said which was that… she's not getting back together with Finn?

"So you're not getting back together with him?" I asked hopefully. I felt weird when she scrutinized me again.

"No Quinn, I am not getting back together with him. Why?" she asked and squinted her eyes at me.

"I-"  
"Please tell me that you don't plan on pursuing him again because-"  
"No! Rachel, God no. Trust me, that ship sailed a _long _time ago_,"_ I stressed because ew, just the thought of getting back together with him for whatever reason is enough to make me nauseous.

"Good," she smiled brightly. She took the container of salt from my hands, put it in the cart and wheeled away again.

_Well_ then.

The registers were down so there were only two lanes open, and the double line of people waiting to check their purchases out stretched past the bread racks, then made a jig to the right and went out of sight along the frozen food coolers. At each of the open positions, a harried-looking girl was totting up purchases on a battery powered pocket calculator. Standing with each girl was one of the Federal's two managers.

As each girl finished checking her order, the manager's would paperclip a chit to the customer's cash or check (obviously no one could use their credit or debit cards) and toss it into the box he was using as a cash repository. They all looked hot and tired.

About half an hour later Rachel and I pushed the cart loaded with my mother's things (except those damned elusive cucumber seeds which they did _not _sell at the Federal) over to the checkout line where Kurt and Finn were standing, at the end of the line.

"Hope you brought a good book," Kurt said warily. "We're going to be in line for a while."

I thought of my mother, at home alone, and had a flash of unease.

"Damned squirrel impulses," I muttered under my breath but Rachel managed to hear me anyway and giggled. She didn't scold me for my language so I took it as a win. And now we have an inside joke. I smiled at her and saw Finn eyeing me out of the corner of my eye. _That's right Hudson, you have competition now…not that you know that…or she knows that…damn, that lost fire quickly._ He averted his eyes when Kurt spoke to him so I didn't pay him anymore attention.

"So, Rach, have you gotten in touch with your fathers yet? I'm sure they're worried what with the storm and all," I said trying to make small talk.

"I've been trying since we got here but I haven't been able to get any reception," she said dejectedly.

"You can use mi-"I reached into my pocket but didn't feel anything other than my keys and the wad of cash. _Oh right, I was shoved out of my house this morning._

"Never mind, I guess I forgot it at home. Sorry," I said.

"Don't worry about it Quinn, I'm sure they're not freaking out as much as I think they are," she said but it was contradicted by the worried look on her face.

"You ok?" I asked

"Of course," she replied, but she wasn't. I could tell there was something on her mind and I wanted to ask her what it was, but I didn't.

We should have left back then. But even then it might have been too late.

**oO0Oo**

*******A**_**Skinner box**_**is a laboratory tool that is used to study animal behavior. The box contains levers or bars that an animal can manipulate to receive reinforcement.**

**AN: Thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorite and followed. I'm excited about the response I got because this is my first Faberry story (though I've been reading them for like, ever). I'm glad people like my story so far and don't worry, I (hopefully) won't take this long to update every time. I was just a little iffy about continuing it because I didn't know where it was going or if people were going to like it. Now, I have a rough outline in my head and I'm a little more prepared. **

**Shit starts to hit the fan in the next chapter!**

**What did you guys think? What do you think will happen next?**


	3. The Coming of the Fog

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 3: The Coming of the Fog**

**Quinn's POV:**

"Jeez, why can't they hurry up?" Finn asked with a pinched look on his face. I just barley stopped myself from rolling my eyes because he'd been asking the same question for ten minutes already and he kept complaining about having to carry the basket with his and Kurt's groceries in it.

"Look," Kurt whispered and enthusiastically pointed his finger, "Army guys!" We all looked over and sure enough, at the back of the aisle, two army guys were quietly murmuring to each other. Their dun uniforms stood out against the much brighter background of summer cloths and sportswear. People had gotten used to seeing army personnel around town all summer (except Kurt, apparently) but I had yet to find out why they were around. These two looked hardly old enough to shave.

"The Arrowhead Project," Rachel murmured. We all looked at her.

"What?" Kurt asked skeptically.

"I've been hearing the name around-"

"What's the Arrowhead Project?" Kurt asked and I glared at him for interrupting Rachel. Rachel didn't take too kindly to it either.

"Supposedly," she started in a conspiratorial whisper that made us all huddle closer together, "in the western part of the city, there's a small government preserve surrounded by wire that's heavily guarded by sentries and closed-circuit television cameras and who knows what else. Or so I've heard; I've never actually seen it. They're supposedly experimenting on something over there. I'm not entirely sure where the name Arrowhead Project came from- if there is a project. I asked Bill Giosti from the public library- where I had originally heard the name-he told me all of this but when I asked him how and where he came about this information, he got vague. His niece, he said, worked for the Central Phone Company, and she had heard things."

"Experimenting on what?" I asked. Rachel shrugged.

"I'm not entirely certain," she said. "I've heard everything from agriculture to atoms but haven't gotten a solid answer." We looked back over to the soldiers but they were already turning the corner. Something else caught my eye towards the back.

"I'll be right back, hold my spot?" I asked Rachel. She nodded and I walked by the people that were behind us in line all the way to the back of the store. As I walked back, I passed the double doors leading to the storage area and heard the steady roar of a generator. I decided it was probably just big enough to keep the cold cases cold, but not large enough to power the doors and cash registers and all the other electrical equipment. I finally reached the back and _yes!_ My eyes had not deceived me, squished into a corner was a tiny rack that held an assortment of seeds in tiny packages. I thumbed through them happily, looking for the last thing on my mother's list. I found the last package of cucumber seeds all the way at the back and quickly snatched them. I grinned and turned around and bumped into someone, our stuff tumbled to the floor. I frowned and leaned down and picked up the seeds and a packet of cigarettes.

"Sorry," I mumbled and handed the person, who I could now see was a girl, her cigarettes.

"Its fine," she said with a bright smile. She had brown hair, bright green eyes and was about an inch shorter than me.

"Cool," I said and made to move around her but she stepped in my way.

"I'm Amanda by the way," she said sticking out her hand. She didn't look like she was going to move anytime soon so I shook her hand.

"Quinn," I said.

"I like your hair," she said smiling. I had to smile at that, it was my first non-shocked-first impression that day.

"Thank you, I like your eyes," I said, because I did. She smiled brighter. We were interrupted by someone clearing their throat.

"Quinn, the line's moving," Rachel said. I smiled at her and made to follow her but she was looking at Amanda.

"I'll see you around," I told Amanda on reflex and when she nodded I walked around her towards Rachel. Rachel seemed to snap out of whatever she was doing and walked back towards the front of the line. I once again had to jog a little to catch up to her. She was frowning which in turn caused me to frown.

"Hey, are you ok?" I asked. She didn't respond at first but then suddenly asked, "Who was that?"

"Who was who?" I asked confused.

"That girl you were talking to, the one with the _pretty eyes," _she said. I flinched a little at her tone of voice. _What the hell?_

"Um…Amanda," I said. She didn't look like she heard me and quickly got in line with Kurt and Finn. I didn't even notice we had reached them but I stood next to her and grabbed hold of my cart anyway. Rachel moved over to the other side of Finn and I frowned but didn't say anything about it. I looked around and noticed that we had moved up to the bread racks-to the point where the double line bent to the left. We could see the checkout lanes now, the two that were open and the other four, deserted, each with a little sign on the stationary conveyor belt, signs that read PLEASE CHOOSE ANOTHER LANE. Beyond the lanes was the big sectioned plate-glass window which gave a view of the parking lot and the intersection. The view was partially obscured by the white-paper backs of signs advertising current specials and the latest giveaway, which happened to be a set of books called _The Mother Nature Encyclopedia._ There were still about thirty people in front of us so I was confused as to why Rachel had gotten out of line to go get me. I stopped puzzling over it and continued to look at the people. The easiest one to pick out was Mrs. Pepper in her blazing yellow pantsuit. She looked like an advertisement for yellow fever.

Suddenly a shrieking noise began in the distance. It quickly built up in volume and resolved itself into the crazy warble of a police siren. A horn blared at the intersection and there was a shriek of brakes and burning rubber. I couldn't see-the angle was all wrong-but the siren reached its loudest as it approached the market and then began to fade as the police car went past. A few people broke out of line to look, but not many. They had waited too long to chance losing their places.

Kurt went and after a few moments he came back and got into line again. "Local fuzz," he said.

The city fire whistle began to wail, slowly cranking up to a shriek of its own, falling off, then rising again. I saw Rachel shuffle back over to my side but again, didn't comment on it.

"What is it?" Finn asked; his posture had stiffened.

"Must be a fire," Kurt said. "There were live lines everywhere because of the storm. The fire trucks will go through in a minute."

That gave my disquiet something to crystallize on. There were live lines in _my _yard.

The manager at the register we were headed for said something to the checker he was supervising; she had been craning around to see what was happening. She flushed and began to run her calculator again.

I didn't want to be in this line. All of a sudden I very badly didn't want to be in it. But it was moving again, and it seemed foolish to leave now. We had gotten down by the cartons of cigarettes.

Someone pushed through the IN door, some teenager. I think it was the kid I almost hit coming in, the one on the Yamaha with no helmet. "The Fog!" he yelled. "Y'oughta see the fog! It's rolling up the road!" People looked around at him. He was panting, as if he'd run a long distance. Nobody said anything. "Well, y'oughta see it," he repeated, sounding defensive this time. People eyed him and some of them shuffled, but no one wanted to lose his or her place in line. A few people who hadn't reached the lines yet left their carts and strolled through the empty checkout lanes to see if they could see what he was talking about. A big guy in a summer hat with a paisley band (the kind of hat you almost never see except in beer commercials with backyard barbecues as their settings) yanked open the OUT door and several people-ten, maybe a dozen-went out with him. The kid went along.

"Don't let out the air-conditioning," one of the army kids cracked, and there were a few chuckles. I wasn't chuckling. I had seen the fog coming across the woods.

"Rachel, want to go look?" Finn asked.

"No," I said at once, for no concrete reason. They looked at me oddly but didn't say anything.

The line moved forward again. People craned their necks, looking for the fog the kid had mentioned, but there was nothing on view except bright blue sky. I heard someone say that the kid must have been joking. Someone else responded that he had seen a funny line of fog not an hour ago. The first whistle whooped and screamed. I didn't like it. It sounded like a big league doom blowing that way.

More people went out. A few even left their places in line, which sped up the proceedings a bit. Then a guy who looked a bit like a mechanic came ducking in and yelled: "Hey! Anybody got a camera?" He looked around, and then ducked back out again.

That caused something of a rush. If it was worth taking a picture of, it was worth seeing.

Suddenly Mrs. Pepper cried in her rusty but powerful old voice, "Don't go out there!"

People turned around to look at her. The orderly shape of the lines had grown fuzzy as people left to get a look at the fog, or as they drew away from Mrs. Pepper, or as they milled around, seeking out their friends. I pretty young woman in a cranberry colored sweatshirt and dark green slacks was looking at Mrs. Pepper in a thoughtful, evaluating way. A few opportunists were taking advantage of whatever the situation was to move up a couple of places. The checker looked over her shoulder again, and the manager tapped her shoulder with a long finger. "Keep your mind on what you're doing, Sally."

"Don't go out there!" Mrs. Pepper yelled. "It's death! I feel that it's death out there!"

The managers just looked impatient and irritated, like they both knew her, but any summer people around her stepped smartly away, never minding their places in line. The hobo that lived at the park a few blocks from my house seemed to have the same effect on people, as if he was a carrier of some contagious disease. Who knows? Maybe he was.

Things began to happen at an accelerating, confusing pace then. A man staggered into the market, shoving the IN door open. His nose was bleeding. "Something in the fog!" he screamed, and Rachel shrank against me-weather because of the man's bloody nose or what he was saying, I don't know. "Something in the fog! Something in the fog took John Lee! Something-" He staggered back against the display of lawn food stacked by the window and sat down there. _"Something in the fog took John Lee and I heard screaming!"_

The situation changed. Made nervous by the storm, by the police siren and the fire whistle, by the subtle dislocation any power outage causes in the American psyche, and by the steadily mounting atmosphere of unease as things somehow…somehow _changed _(I don't know how to put it any better than that), people began to move in a body.

They didn't bolt. If I told you that, I would be giving you entirely the wrong impression. It wasn't exactly panic. They didn't run-or at least, most of them didn't. But they went. Some of them went to the big show window on the far side of the check-out lanes to look out. Others went out the IN door, some still carrying their intended purchases. One of the managers, harried and officious, began yelling: "Hey! You haven't paid for that! Hey, you! Come back here with those hot-dog rolls!"

Someone laughed at him, a crazy, yodeling sound that made other people smile. Even as they smiled they looked bewildered, confused, and nervous. Then someone else laughed and the manager flushed. He grabbed a box of mushrooms away from a lady who was crowding past him to look out the window-the segments of glass were lined with people now; they were like the people you see looking through loopholes into a building site-and the lady screamed, "Give me back my mushies!" This bizarre term of affection caused two men standing nearby to break into crazy laughter- there was something pleading about all of it, now. Mrs. Pepper trumpeted again not to go out there. The fire whistle whooped breathlessly. And Rachel burst into tears. My eyes widened because I didn't know what to do. Kurt didn't seem to notice what with the noise and his bickering with Finn slightly to the side. I let instinct take over and wrapped Rachel in a hug. She cried into my shoulder.

"Rachel, w-what's wrong?" I asked whiling my body not to start shaking from the proximity. Something was wrong with Rachel, now wasn't the time.

"I-I don't know," she sobbed. "I'm scared," she whispered and I only just heard her because her face was so close to my ear. "What did he mean something in the fog?" I didn't know how to answer that. I looked over at Kurt and he was frowning ponderously and Finn who had his face scrunched up weirdly, which was his way of looking confused.

Someone bumped past me roughly, pushing me tighter against Rachel. I was getting scared, too. The confusion was mounting. Sally, the checker, started away but the manager grabbed her back by the collar of her red smock and it ripped. She slapped-clawed out at him, her face twisted. _"Get your fucking hands off me!" _she screamed.

"Oh, shut up, you little bitch," the manager said, but he sounded totally astounded.

He reached for her again but the other manager said sharply: "Bud! Cool it!"

Someone else screamed. It hadn't been panic before-not quite-but it was getting there. People streamed out of both doors. There was a crash of breaking glass and Coke fizzed suddenly across the floor.

"What _is _this?" Kurt exclaimed.

That was when it started getting dark…but no, that's not exactly right. The first thing I thought was that the lights in the market had gone out. I looked up at the fluorescent lights in a quick reflex action, and I wasn't alone. Until I remembered they had been out the entire time we had been in the market and things hadn't seemed dark before. Then I knew, even before the people at the window started to yell and point.

The fog was coming.

It came from the entrance to the parking lot, and even this close it looked no different than it had when I first noticed it on the far side of the woods. It was white and bright but nonreflecting. It was moving fast, and it blotted out most of the sun. Where the sun had been there was now a silver coin in the sky, like a full moon in winter seen through a thin scud of cloud.

It came with lazy speed. Watching it reminded me somehow of last evening's waterspout. There are big forces in nature that you hardly ever see-earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes-I haven't seen them all but I've seen enough on TV to guess that they all move with that lazy, hypnotizing speed. They hold you spellbound, the way my mother had been in front of the glass door last night. A nice restored Dutch Colonial was swallowed whole. For a moment the second floor of the ramshackle apartment building next door jutted out of the whiteness, and then it went too. The KEEP RIGHT sign at the entrance and exit points to the Federal's parking lot disappeared, the black letters on the sign seeming to float for a moment in limbo after the sign's dirty white background was gone. The cars in the parking lot began to disappear next.

"What _is _this?" Kurt asked again, and there was a catch in his voice.

It came on, eating up the blue sky and the fresh black concrete with equal ease. Even twenty feet away the line of demarcation was perfectly clear. I had the nutty feeling that I was watching some extra-good piece of visual effects. It happened so quickly. The blue sky disappeared to a wide swipe, then to a stripe, then to a pencil line. Then it was gone. Blank white pressed against the glass of the wide show window. I could see as far as the litter barrel that stood maybe four feet away, but not much farther. I could see the front bumper of my Passat, but that was all.

A woman screamed, very loud and long. Rachel pressed herself tighter against me. Her body was trembling like a loose bundle of wires with high voltage running through them.

A man yelled and bolted through one of the deserted lanes towards the door. I think that was what finally started the stampede. People rushed pell-mell into the fog.

"_Hey!"_ the manager, Bud, roared. I don't know if he was angry, scared, or both. His face was nearly purple. Veins stood out on his neck, looking almost as thick as battery cables. "_Hey, you people, you can't take that stuff. Get back here with that stuff, you're shoplifting!"_

They kept going, but some tossed their stuff aside. Some were laughing and excited, but they were a minority. They poured out into the fog, and none of us who stayed ever saw them again. There was a faint, acrid smell drifting in through the open door. People began to jam up there. That's when the pushing and shoving started.

I let go of Rachel with one arm so I could grab Finn's arm before he drifted out of reach. "No, man, I wouldn't," I said. I didn't like him all that much, but I had a bad feeling.

He turned back. "What?"

"Better wait and see."

"See what?" he asked in an annoyed tone. I noticed his eyes kept drifting towards Rachel every few seconds.

"I don't know," I said.

"You don't think-" he began, and a shriek came out of the fog.

Finn shut up. The tight jam at the OUT door loosened and then reversed itself. The babble of excited conversation, shouts and calls, subsided. The faces of the people by the door suddenly looked flat and pale and two dimensional.

The shriek went on and on, competing with the fire whistle. It seemed impossible that any human pair of lungs could have enough air in them to sustain such a shriek. Finn muttered something that sounded like, "Oh my Cheesus," and ran his hands through his hair. Kurt was silent by his side.

The shriek ended abruptly. It didn't dwindle; it was cut off. One more man went outside, a beefy guy in chino workpants. I think he was set on rescuing the shrieker. For a moment he was out there, visible through the glass and the mist, like a figure seen through milk scum on a tumbler. Then (and as far as I know, I was the only one to see this) something beyond him seemed to move, a gray shadow in all the white. And it seemed to me that instead of running into the fog, the man in the chino pants was_ jerked_ into it, his hands flailing upward as if in surprise.

For a moment there was total silence in the market.

A constellation of moons suddenly glowed into being outside. The parking-lot sodium lights, undoubtedly supplied by underground electrical cables, had just gone on.

"Don't go out there," Mrs. Pepper said in her best gore-crow voice. "It's death to go out there."  
All at once, no one seemed disposed to agree or laugh.

Another scream came from outside, this one muffled and rather distant-sounding. Rachel tensed against me again.

"Quinn, what's going on?" the manager that wasn't Bud asked me. I realized very suddenly that it was Ollie Weeks. I always small-talked with him when I came shopping for groceries. He had grown out his hair since I'd seen him last, which is why I hadn't recognized him. There were beads of sweat on his round, smooth face. "What is this?"

"I'll be damned if I have any idea," I said. Ollie looked badly scared, which is probably why he hadn't teased me about my new look. He was a slightly rounded 19 year old who always knew what I was talking about when I came to books and who liked to drink beer. On the pudgy little finger of his left hand was a sapphire ring. The February before, he had won some money in the state lottery. He bought the ring out of his winnings. I always had the idea that Ollie was a little afraid of girls, which would actually explain the awkwardness of the first time we talked.

"I don't dig this," he said. Rachel, having apparently composed herself a bit, stopped hugging me and moved to my side.

"You ok?" I asked softly. She tried to smile and nodded a little. Her eyes were red from crying and she was still holding onto my arm. I was about to introduce her to Ollie when the old geezer who runs the secondhand shop near Breadstix walked past us, bundled into the collegiate letter-sweater he wears year-round. He said loudly: "It's one of those pollution clouds. The mills. Chemicals." With that, he made off up Aisle 4, past the toilet paper.

"Let's get out of here," Kurt suddenly said with no conviction at all. "What do you say we-"

There was a thud. An odd, twisting thud that I felt mostly in my feet, as if the entire building had suddenly dropped three feet. Several people cried out in fear and surprise. There was a musical jingle of bottles leaning off their shelves and destroying themselves upon the floor. A chunk of glass shaped like a pie wedge fell out of the segments of the wide front window, and I saw that the wooden frames banding the heavy sections of glass had buckled and splintered in some places.

The fire whistle stopped in mid-whoop.

The quiet that followed was the bated silence of people waiting for something else, something more. I was shocked and numb.

"You people!" Finn bellowed. "All you people, listen to me!"

They looked around. Finn was holding up both hands, the fingers splayed.

"It may be dangerous to go outside!" Finn yelled.

"No shit," I mutter under my breath. Rachel heard me and nudged me slightly.

""Why?" a woman screamed back. "My kids're at home! I got to get back to my kids!"

"It's death to go out there," Mrs. Pepper came back smartly. She was standing by the twenty-five-pound sacks of fertilizer stacked below the window, and her face seemed to bulge somehow, as if she were swelling.

A teenager gave her a sudden hard push and she sat down on the bags with a surprised grunt. "Stop saying that, you old bag! Stop saying that crazy bullshit!"

"Please!" I yelled. I couldn't help myself, she was worried about her _kids._ "If we just wait a few moments until it blows over and we can see-"

A babble of conflicting shouts greeted this.

"She's right," someone shouted to be heard. "Let's just try to keep cool."

"I think it was an earthquake," a bespectacled man said. His voice was soft. In one hand he held a package of hamburgers and a bag of buns. The other hand was holding the hand of a little girl, maybe about four years old. "I really think it was an earthquake."

"They had one up in Naples a few years ago," I fat local man said.

"That was in Casco," his wife contradicted immediately. She spoke in the unmistakable tone of a veteran contradictor.

"Naples," the fat local man said, but with less assurance.

"Casco," his wife said firmly, and he gave up.

Somewhere a can that had been jostled to the very edge of its shelf by the thump, earthquake, whatever it had been, fell off with a delayed clatter. The hamburger man's little girl suddenly burst into tears. "I want to go _home! _I want mommy!"

"Can't you shut that kid up?" Bud asked. His eyes were darting rapidly but aimlessly from place to place.

"Would you like to get shot in the teeth, motor-mouth?" I asked him violently. You could say I was a bit overprotective of children.

"Come on, Quinn, that's not helping," Rachel whispered into my ear and tugged at my arm lightly. I calmed down instantly but sent one last glare at Bud.

"I'm sorry," the woman who had screamed earlier said. "I'm sorry, but I can't stay here. I've got to get home to see my kids."

She looked around at us, a blond woman with a tired, pretty face.

"Wanda's looking after little Victor, you see. Wanda's only eight and sometimes she forgets…forgets she supposed to be…well, watching him, you know. And little Victor…he likes to turn on the stove burners to see the little red light come on…he likes that light…and sometimes he pulls out the plugs…little Victor does…and Wanda gets…bored watching him after a while…she's just eight…" She stopped talking and just looked at us. I imagine we must have looked like nothing but a bank if merciless eyes to her right then, not human beings at all, just eyes. "_Isn't anyone going to help me?" _she screamed and I felt a tug at my heart when her lips began to tremble because she was talking about her _kids._ That thought floated around in my head repeatedly.

"Won't...won't anybody here see a lady home?"  
No one replied. People shuffled their feet. She looked from face to face with her broken face. The fat local man took a hesitant half-step forward and his wife jerked him back with one quick tug, her hand clapped over his wrist like a manacle.

"You?" the blond woman asked Bud. He put his hand over his Texas Instruments calculator on the counter and made no reply. "You?" she said to Ollie and he shook his head. "You?" she said to Finn, and Finn began to say something, probably something half-assed and…and she dismissed him and Finn just trailed off.

"You?" she said to me and I felt Rachel's grip on my arm tighten exceedingly-almost cutting off the circulation- she probably saw the look on my face. I wanted to help this woman get back to her kids. I turned to look at Rachel and saw that her eyes were wide with panic, I put my hand on hers and I had been about to take it off when the woman she spoke again. Apparently I had taken too long.

"I hope you all rot in hell," she said. She didn't scream it. Her voice was dead tired. I looked over as she went to the OUT door and pulled it open, using both hands. I wanted to say something, call her back, but my mouth was too dry.

"Aw, lady, listen-" the teenage kid who had shouted at Mrs. Pepper began. He held her arm. She looked down at his hand and he let her go, shamefaced. She slipped out into the fog. We watched her go and no one said anything. We watched the fog overlay her and make her insubstantial, not a human being anymore but a pencil-ink sketch of a human being done on the world's whitest paper, and no one said anything. For a moment it was like the letters of the KEEP RIGHT sign that had seemed to float into nothingness; her arms and legs and pallid blond hair were all gone and only the foggy remnants of her red summer dress remained, seeming to dance in white limbo. Then her dress was gone, too, and no one said anything.

**oO0Oo**

**AN: Wow, longest chapter so far. That was intense. So yeah…shit continues to hit the fan in the next chapter….…sorry, my brain has gone into awkward pause mode because it's 4 am so I'm just…**

**Anyway, thank you for reading and all that. I told you it wouldn't be a long wait! That's probably the first time I've been right about that and I'll hopefully continue this whole not-too-long-waits-for-chapter-updates… thing.**

**Did I mention it was 4 am? I should probably go to sleep now…**


	4. Problems with the Generators

**A/N: You finally get a taste of what's in the fog! Muahahahaha! **

**Oh, and there's decidedly more swearing in this chapter…and blood, just a heads up. **

**But you guys probably don't care because you clicked on this even though, you know…its rated M.**

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 4: Problems with the Generators**

**Quinn's POV:**

Murmuring, that's what finally broke the deafening silence. People started moving around again, talking and I had the beginnings of a headache. I heard crying coming from the back of the store. Nobody else seemed to notice, everyone was too preoccupied. I looked around and noticed that Rachel was speaking with Kurt about something off to the side and Finn had gathered a crowd of listeners and was busy spellbinding-or trying to.

Abandoning my cart, I followed the crying and ended up back by the long white meat cabinet that ran the length of the store at the back. Mr. McVey, the butcher, was still there. We nodded at each other, the best we could do under the circumstances. I looked over and a few aisles down the hamburger man was trying to console his daughter. She was acting hysterical and tantrummy, screaming for her mother in a hoarse, demanding way through her tears.

I sat down on the floor and watched the man do the same and take the little girl on his lap. He held her face against his chest and rocked and talked to her. I could only just make out what he was saying- telling her all the lies parents keep in reserve for bad situations, the ones that sound so damn plausible to a child. He told them in a tone of perfect conviction. I was broken out of my daze when Rachel plopped down beside me.

"That's no ordinary fog," she said after a few seconds of silence. She looked at me, her eyes still a bit red from her previous break-down. "It isn't, is it?" She asked it in a way that made me think she wasn't actually asking; like she already knew what I was going to say. I answered her anyway.

"No, I don't think so." I said.

I looked over to the hamburger man and saw that his daughter had dosed off in his arms and he was trying to cover her with his jacket without taking it off. I was struck with the urge to help him so I got up and walked over to him.

"Would you like me to find something to cover her up with?" I asked quietly. The man seemed startled by my question. But when I offered him a small smile he looked relieved and smiled back dimly; he nodded.

"Thank you," he whispered and I nodded. I turned around and went to find something, Rachel closely followed behind. She caught up to me and looked like she wanted to say something.

"What?"

"That was really nice of you," she said, "offering to help that man." I blushed and ducked my head. I didn't really know what to say. I got the feeling that Rachel didn't expect me to say anything anyway.

Most of the people were still up front looking out into the thick blanket of fog. Bud Brown (I had overheard him being addressed by his last name earlier) stood rigidly at his post, but Ollie Weeks had left his.

There were a few people in the aisles, wandering like ghosts, their faces greasy with shock. We went into the storage area through the big double doors between the meat cabinet and the beer cooler.

The generator roared steadily behind its plywood partition, but something had gone wrong.

"Smell that?" I asked Rachel.

"Yeah, what is it?" she asked covering her mouth and nose with her hand.

"Diesel fumes. Something must be wrong with the generators, they're way too strong. Wait for me outside," I said. She nodded and I walked toward the partition, taking shallow breaths. As I got closer it became almost too much so I unbuttoned my shirt and put part of it over my mouth and nose.

The storage area was long and narrow, feebly lit by two sets of emergency lights. Cartons were stacked everywhere-bleach on one side, cases of soft drinks on the far side of the partition, stacked cases of Beefaroni and catsup. One of those had fallen over and the cardboard carton appeared to be bleeding.

I unlatched the door in the generator partition and stepped through. The machine was obscured in drifting oily clouds of blue smoke. The exhaust pipe ran out through a hole in the wall. Something must have blocked off the outside end of the pipe. There was a simple on/off switch and I flipped it. The generator hitched, belched, coughed, and died. Then it ran down in a diminishing series of popping sounds.

The emergency lights faded out and I was left in darkness. I got scared very quickly, and I got disoriented. My breathing sounded like a low wind rattling in straw. I bumped my nose on the flimsy plywood door going out and my heart lurched. There were windows in the double doors, but for some reason they had been painted black, and the darkness was nearly total. I got off course and ran into a stack of the bleach cartons. They tumbled and fell. One came close enough to my head to make me step backward, and I tripped over another carton that had landed behind me. I fell down, thumping my head hard enough to see bright stars in the darkness.

"_Fuck!"_

"Quinn?" I heard Rachel calling my name.

"I'm fine, I just fell. Don't come back here it's too dark; you might trip over something too. I'll be right there," I called back.

"Ok, hurry up then!"

"Ok!"

I lay there cursing myself and rubbing my head, telling myself to just take it easy, just get up and get out of here, get back to Rachel, telling myself nothing soft and slimy was going to close over my ankle or slip into one groping hand. I told myself not to lose control, or I would end up blundering around back here in a panic, knocking things over and creating a mad obstacle course for myself.

I stood up carefully, looking for a pencil line of light between the double doors. I found it, a faint but unmistakable scratch on the darkness. I started toward it, and then I stopped.

There was a sound. A soft sliding sound. It stopped, then started again with a stealthy little bump. Everything inside me went loose. I regressed magically to four years of age. That sound wasn't coming from the market. It was coming from behind me.

From outside.

Where that fog was.

Something was slipping and sliding and scraping over cinderblocks and, maybe, looking for a way in.

Or maybe it was already in, and it was looking for me. Maybe in a moment I would feel whatever was making that sound on my shoe. Or on my neck.

It came again. I was positive it was outside, but that didn't make it any better. I told my legs to go and they refused the order. Then the quality of noise changed. Something _rasped _across the darkness and my heart leaped in my chest and I lunged at that thin vertical line of light. I hit the doors straight-arm and burst through into the market.

Four or five people were right outside the double doors- Ollie Weeks and Rachel were two of them- and they all jumped back in surprise. Ollie grabbed at his chest. "Quinn!" he said in a pinched voice. "Jesus Christ, you want to take ten years off my-" he saw my face. "What's the matter with you?"

"Did you hear it?" I asked. My voice sounded strange in my own ears, high and squeaked. "Did any of you hear it?"

Rachel was looking at me with a peculiar look on her face. They hadn't heard anything, of course. They had come up to see why the generator had gone off while Rachel had been waiting for me outside the double doors. As Ollie told me that, one of the bag-boys bustled up with an armload of flashlights. He looked from Ollie to me curiously.

"I turned the generator off," I said, and explained why.

"What did you hear?" one of the other men asked. He worked for the town road department; his name was Jim something.

"I don't know. A scraping noise. Slithery. I don't want to hear it again."

"Nerves," the other guy with Ollie said. No. It was not nerves.

"Did you hear it before the lights went out?"

"No, only after. But…" But nothing. I could see the way they were looking at me. They didn't want any more bad news, anything frightening or off-kilter. There was enough of that already. Only Rachel and Ollie looked as if they believed me.

"Let's go in and start her up again," the bag-boy said, handing out the flashlights. Rachel took hers doubtfully. The bag-boy offered me one, a slight contemptuous shine in his eyes. He was maybe sixteen. After a moment's thought, I took the light. I still needed something for the hamburger man to cover his daughter with.

Ollie opened the doors and chocked them, letting in some light. The bleach cartons lay scattered around the half-open door in the plywood partition.  
The guy named Jim sniffed and said: "Smells pretty rank, all right. Guess you was right to shut'er down."

The flashlight beams bobbed and danced across cartons of canned goods, toilet paper, dog food. The beams were smoky in the drifting fumes blocked exhaust had turned back into the storage area. The bag-boy trained his light briefly on the wide loading door at the extreme right.

The two men and Ollie went inside the generator compartment. Their lights flashed uneasily back and forth, reminding me of the comic books I used to make when I was little about pirates burying their bloody gold at midnight, or maybe the mad doctor and his assistant snatching a body. Shadows, made twisted and monstrous by the shifting, conflicted flashlight beams, bobbed on the walls. The generator ticked irregularly as it cooled.

The bag-boy was walking toward the loading door, flashing his light ahead of him. "I wouldn't go over there," I said.

"No, I know _you _wouldn't." He was mocking me and I didn't like it.

"Try it now, Ollie," one of the men said. The generator wheezed, then roared.

"Jesus! Shut her down! Holy crow, don't that _stink!"_

The generator died again.

The bag-boy walked back from the loading door just as they came out. "Something's plugged that exhaust, all right," one of the men said.

"I'll tell you what," the bag-boy said. His eyes were shining in the glow of the flashlights, and there was a devil-may-care expression on his face that I had sketched too many times as part of the front-pieces for my comic books. "Get it running long enough for me to raise the loading door back there. I'll go around and clear whatever it is."

"Norm, I don't think that's a very good idea," Ollie said doubtfully.

"Is it an electric door?" the one called Jim asked.

"Sure," Ollie said. "But I just don't think it would be wise for-"

"That's ok," the other guy said. He tipped his baseball cap back on his head. "I'll do it."

"No, you don't understand," Ollie began again. "I really don't think anyone should-"  
"Don't worry," he said indulgently to Ollie, dismissing him.

Norm, the bag-boy, was indignant. "Listen, it was my idea," he said.

All at once, by some magic, they had gotten around to arguing about who was going to do it instead of whether or not it should be done at all. Rachel was right beside me and it struck me as odd that she hadn't said a word yet. But of course, none of them had heard that nasty slithering sound. "Stop it!" I said loudly.

They all looked around at me.

"You don't seem to understand, or you're trying as hard as you can _not _to understand. This is no ordinary fog. Nobody has come into the market since it hit. If you open that loading door and something comes in-"

"Something like what?" Norm asked with perfect eighteen-year-old macho contempt.

"Whatever made that noise I heard."  
"Ms. Fabray," Jim said. "Pardon me, but I'm not convinced you heard anything. I know you think you're a big shot now that you've gone all punk and colored your hair, but that doesn't make you any different from anyone else, in my book. Way I figure, you got in here in the dark and maybe you just…got a little confused."  
"Maybe I did," I said. "And maybe if you start screwing around outside, you ought to start by making sure the lady got home safe to her kids." His attitude-and that of his buddy and of norm the bag-boy- was making me mad and scaring me more at the same time. They had the sort of light in their eyes that some men get when they go shooting rats down at the dump.

"Hey," Jim's buddy said. "When any of us here want your advice, we'll ask for it."

Hesitantly, Ollie said: "The generator really isn't that important, you know. The food in the cold cases will keep for twelve hours or more with absolutely no-"  
"Okay, kid, you're it," Jim said brusquely. "I'll start the motor; you raise the door so that the place doesn't stink up so bad. Me and Myron will be standing by the exhaust outflow," I thought I heard Rachel mumble something, but dismissed it,"Give us a yell when it's clear."

"Sure," Norm said, and bustled excitedly.

"Quinn, I don't think this is a very good idea," Rachel whispered to me. I looked at her and saw she was scared, probably even as much as me.

"Me either," I whispered back.

"This is crazy," I said louder, so everyone could hear. "You let that lady go by herself-"  
"I didn't notice you breaking your ass to escort her," Jim's buddy Myron said. I bristled, but I was not to be deterred. A dull, brick-colored flush was creeping out of his collar.

"-but you're going to let this kid risk his life over a generator that doesn't even matter?"

"Why don't you shut the fuck up!" Norm yelled. I ground my teeth when I felt Rachel flinch beside me.

"Listen, Ms. Fabray," Jim said, and smiled at me coldly. "I'll tell you what. If you've got anything else to say, I think you better count your teeth first, because I'm tired of listening to your bullshit."

Ollie looked at me, plainly frightened. I shrugged. They were all crazy, that was all. Their sense of proportion was temporarily gone. Out there they had been confused and scared. In here was a straightforward mechanical problem: a balky generator. Solving the problem would help them feel less confused and helpless. Therefore they would solve it.

Jim and his friend Myron decided I knew when I was beat and went back to the generator compartment. "Ready, Norm?" Jim asked.

Norm nodded, and then realized they couldn't hear a nod. "Yeah," he said.

"Norm," I said. "Don't be stupid."

"It's a mistake," Rachel backed me up and Ollie nodded.

He looked at us, and suddenly his face was much younger than eighteen. It was the face of a boy. His Adam's apple bobbed convulsively, and I saw that he was scared green. He opened his mouth to say something-I think he was going to call it off-and then the generator roared into life again, and when it was running smoothly, Norm lunged at the button to the right of the door and it began to rattle upward on its dual steel tracks. The emergency lights had come back on when the generator started. Now they dimmed down as the motor which lifted the door sucked away the juice.

The shadows ran backward and melted. The storage area began to fill with the mellow white light of an overcast late-winter day. I noticed that odd, acrid smell again.

The loading door went up two feet, then four. Beyond I could see a square cement platform outlined around the edges with a yellow stripe. The yellow faded and washed out in just three feet. The fog was incredibly thick.

"_Ho up!" _Norm yelled.

Tendrils of fog, as white and fine as floating lace, eddied inside. The air was cold. It had been noticeably cool all morning long, especially after the sticky heat of the last three weeks, but it had been a summery coolness. This was _cold._ It was like March. I shivered and thought of my mother.

The generator died. Jim came out just as Norm ducked under the door. He saw it. So did I. So did Ollie and Rachel.

A tentacle came over the far lip of the concrete loading platform and grabbed Norm around the calf. My mouth dropped wide open. Ollie made a short glottal sound of surprise-_uk!_ The tentacle tapered from a thickness of a foot-the size of a grass snake-at the point where it had wrapped itself around Norm's lower leg to a thickness of maybe four or five feet where it disappeared into the fog. It was slate gray on top, shading to fleshy pink underneath. And there were rows of suckers on the underside. They were moving and writhing like hundreds of small, puckering mouths.

Norm looked down and saw what had him. His eyes bulged. "_Get it off me! Hey, get it off me! Christ Jesus, get this frigging think off me!"_

"Oh my god," Jim whimpered.

Norm grabbed the bottom edge of the loading door and yanked himself back in. The tentacle seemed to bulge, the way your arm will when you flex it. Norm was yanked back against the corrugated steel door-his head clanged against it. The tentacle bulged more, and Norm's legs and torso began to slip back out. The bottom edge of the loading door scraped the shirttail out of his pants. He yanked savagely and pulled himself back in like a man doing a chin-up.

"Help me," he was sobbing. "Help me, you guys, please, please!"

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Myron said. He had come out of the generator compartment to see what was going on.

I was the closest, and I grabbed Norm around the waist and yanked as hard as I could, rocking back on my heels. For a moment we moved backward, but only for a moment. It was like stretching a rubber band or pulling taffy. The tentacle yielded but did not give up its basic grip at all. Then three more tentacles floated out of the fog towards us. One curled around Norm's flapping red Federal apron and tore it away. It disappeared back into the fog with the red cloth curled in its grip and I thought of something my mother used to say when I would beg for something she didn't want me to have-candy, a comic book, some toy. "You need that like a hen needs a flag," she'd say. I thought of that, and I thought of that tentacle waving Norm's red apron around, and I started laughing. I started laughing, except my laughter and Norm's screams sounded about the same. Maybe no one even knew I was laughing except me.

The other two tentacles slithered aimlessly back and forth on the loading platform for a moment, making those low scraping sounds I had heard earlier. Then one of them slapped against Norm's left hip and slipped around it. I felt it touch my arm. In retrospect I know that if it had gripped me with those suckers, I would have gone out into the fog too. But it didn't. It grabbed Norm. The third tentacle wrapped around his other ankle.

Now he was being pulled away from me. "Help me!" I shouted. "Ollie! Someone! Give me a hand here!"

But they didn't come. I don't know what they were doing, but they didn't come. Sue Sylvester's cheerleading (military) training was the only reason why my arms hadn't given out.

I looked down and saw the tentacle around Norm's waist working into his skin. The suckers were _eating _him where his shirt had pulled out of his pants. Blood, as red as his missing apron, began to seep out of the trench the pulsing tentacle had made for itself.

I banged my head on the lower edge of the partly raised door.

Norm's legs were outside again. One of his loafers had fallen off. A new tentacle came out of the fog, wrapped its tip firmly around the shoe, and made off with it. Norm's fingers clutched at the door's lower edge. He had it in a death grip. His fingers were livid. He was not screaming anymore; he was beyond that. His head whipped back and forth in an endless gesture of negation, and his long black hair flew wildly.

I looked over his shoulder and saw more tentacles coming, dozens of them; a forest of them. Most were small but a few were gigantic, as thick as the moss-corseted tree that had been lying across the road that morning. The big ones had candy pink suckers that seemed the size of manhole covers. One of these big ones struck the concrete loading platform with a loud rolling _thrrrrap! _sound and moved sluggishly toward us like a great blind earthworm. I gave one gigantic tug, and the tentacle holding Norm's right calf slipped a little. That was all. But before it reestablished its grip, I saw that the thing was eating him away.

One of the tentacles brushed delicately past my cheek and then wavered in the air, as if debating. I thought of Rachel then. She was still in danger. If one of those things got a hold of me, there would be no one to watch out for her-except maybe Finn. Finn, the selfish man-child who only thinks of himself; who would probably feed Rachel to the thousand-tentacle monster on a silver platter if it meant saving himself. So I made a choice right then.

I let go of Norm and dropped to my hands and knees.

I was half in and half out, directly under the raised door. A tentacle passed by on my left, seeming to walk on its suckers. It attached itself to one of Norm's bulging upper arms, paused for a second and then slid around it in coils.

Now Norm looked like something out of a mad-man's dream of snake charming. Tentacles twisted over him uneasily almost everywhere…and they were all around me, as well. I made a clumsy leap-frog jump back inside, landed on my shoulder, and rolled. Rachel, Jim, Ollie and Myron were still there. They stood there like a tableau of waxworks in Madame Tussaud's, their faces pale, their eyes too bright. Jim and Myron flanked the door by the generator compartment.

"Start the generator!" I yelled at them.

Neither moved. They were staring with a drugged, thanatotic avidity at the loading bay.

I groped at the floor, picked up the first thing that came to hand-a box of Snowy bleach-and chucked it at Jim. It hit him in the gut, just above the belt buckle. He grunted and grabbed himself. His eyes flickered back into some semblance of normality.

"Go start that fucking generator!" I screamed so loudly it hurt my throat.

He didn't move; instead he began to defend himself, apparently having decided that, with Norm being eaten alive by some insane horror from the fog, the time had come for rebuttals.

"I'm sorry," he whined. "I didn't know, how the hell was I supposed to know? You said you heard something but I didn't know what you meant, you should have said what you meant better. I thought, I dunno, maybe a bird, or something-"

So then Rachel moved, bunting him aside with one shoulder and blundering into the generator room. Jim stumbled over one of the bleach cartons and fell down, just as I had done in the dark. "I'm sorry," he said again. His red hair had tumbled over his brow. His cheeks were cheese white. His eyes were those of a horrified little boy. Seconds later the generator coughed and rumbled into life.

I turned back to the loading door. Norm was almost gone, yet he clung grimly with one hand. His body boiled with tentacles, and blood pattered serenely down on the concrete in dime-size droplets. His head whipped back and forth and his eyes bulged with terror as they stared off into the fog.

Other tentacles now crept and crawled over the floor inside. There were too many near the button that controlled the loading door to even think of approaching it. One of them closed around a half-liter bottle of Pepsi and carried it off. Another slipped around a cardboard carton and squeezed. The carton ruptured and rolls of toilet paper, packs of Hot Pockets, geysered upward, came down, and rolled everywhere. Tentacles seized them eagerly.

One of the big ones slipped in. Its tip rose from the floor and it seemed to sniff the air. It began to advance towards Myron and he stepped mincingly away from it, his eyes rolling madly in their sockets. A high-pitched little moan escaped his slacked lips.

I looked around for something, anything at all long enough to reach over the questing tentacles and punch the SHUT button on the wall. I saw a janitor's push broom leaning against a stack-up of beer cases and grabbed it.

Norm's good hand was ripped loose. He thudded down onto the concrete loading platform and scrabbled madly for a grip with his one free hand. His eyes met mine for a moment. They were hellishly bright and aware. He knew what was happening to him. Then he was pulled, bumping and rolling, into the fog. There was another scream, choked off. Norm was gone.

I pushed the tip of the broom handle onto the button and the motor whined. The door began to slide back down. It touched the thickest of the tentacles first, the one that had been investigating in Myron's direction. It indented its hide-skin, whatever- and then pierced it. Black goo began to spurt from it. It writhed madly, whipping across the concrete storage-area floor like an obscene bullwhip, and then it seemed to flatten out. A moment later it was gone. The others began to withdraw.

One of them had a five-pound bag of Pedigree dog food, and it wouldn't let go. The descending door cut it in to two before thumping home in its grooved slot. The severed chunk of tentacle squeezed convulsively tighter, splitting the bag open and sending brown nuggets of dog food everywhere. Then it began to flop on the floor like a fish out of water, curling and uncurling, but ever more slowly, until it lay still. I prodded it with the tip of the broom. The piece of tentacle, maybe three feet long, closed on it savagely for a moment, then loosened and lay limp again in the confused litter of toilet paper, dog food, and bleach cartons.

There was no sound except the roar of the generator and Ollie softly crying. I could see Rachel inside the generator compartment; she was sitting on a stool in there with her face clutched in her hands.

Then I became aware of another sound. The soft, slithery sound I had heard in the dark. Only now the sound was multiplied tenfold. It was the sound of tentacles squirming over the outside of the loading door, trying to find a way in.

Myron took a couple of steps toward me. "Look," he said. "You got to understand-"

I looped a fist at his face. He was too surprised to even try to block it. It landed just below his nose and mashed his upper lip into his teeth. Blood flowed into his mouth.

"You got him killed!" I shouted. "Did you get a good look at it? Did you get a good look at what you did?"

I started to pummel him, throwing wild rights and lefts, not punching exactly but hitting. He stepped back, shaking some of them off, taking others with a numbness that seemed like a kind of resignation or penance. That made me angrier. I bloodied his nose. I raised a moose under one of his eyes that was going to black just beautifully. I clipped him a hard one on the chin. After that one, his eyes went cloudy and semi-vacant.

"Look," he kept saying, "look, look," and then I punched him low in the stomach and the air went out of him and he didn't say "look, look" anymore. I don't know how long I would have gone on punching him, but someone grabbed my arms. I jerked free and turned around. I was hoping it was Jim. I wanted to punch Jim out, too.

But it wasn't Jim. It was Ollie with Rachel right beside him. Their faces were dead pale, except for the dark circles around their eyes- eyes that were still shiny from tears. "Don't Quinn," he said. "Don't hit him anymore. It doesn't solve anything."

Jim was standing off to one side, his face a bewildered blank. I kicked a carton of something at him. It struck one of his Dingo boots and bounced away.

"You and your Buddy are a couple of stupid assholes," I said.

"Come on, Quinn," Ollie said unhappily. "Quit it."  
"You two assholes got that kid killed."

Jim looked down at his Dingo boots. Myron sat on the floor and held his beer belly. I was breathing hard. The blood was roaring in my ears and I was trembling all over. I sat down on a couple of cartons and put my head down between my knees and gripped my legs hard just above the ankles. I felt Rachel sit beside me and put a hand on my back, rubbing in small circles. We sat there for a while with my hair in my face, waiting to see if I was going to black out or puke or what.

After a bit the feeling began to pass and I looked up at Rachel then at Ollie. His pinky ring flashed subdued fire in the glow of the emergency lights.

"Okay," I said dully. "I'm done."

"Good," Ollie said. "We've got to think what to do next."

The storage area was beginning to stink of exhaust again. "Shut the generator down. That's the first thing."  
"Yeah, let's get out of here," Myron said. His eyes appealed to me. "I'm sorry about the kid. But you got to understand-"

"I don't understand anything. You and your buddy go back into the market, but you wait right there by the beer cooler. And don't say a word to anybody. Not yet."  
They went willingly enough, huddling together as they passed through the swinging doors. Ollie killed the generator, and just as the lights started to fail, I saw a quilted rug-the sort of thing movers use to pad breakable things-flopped over a stack of returnable soda bottles. I reached up and grabbed it for the hamburger man's kid. I felt Rachel move her hand from my back and wrap her arm around my forearm.

There was the shuffling, blundering sound of Ollie coming out of the generator compartment. Like a great many overweight men, his breathing had a slightly heavy wheezing sound.

"Quinn?" His voice wavered a little. "You still here?"

"Right here, Ollie. You want to watch out for all those bleach cartons."  
"Yeah."  
I guided him with my voice and in thirty seconds or so he reached out of the dark and gripped my shoulder. He gave a long, trembling sigh.

"Christ, let's get out of here." I could smell the Rolaids he always chewed on his breath."This dark is…is bad."  
"It is," I said. "But hang tight a minute, Ollie. I wanted to talk to you guys and I didn't want those other two fuckheads listening."

"Language Quinn," Rachel said and lightly slapped my forearm. I smiled a bit; she was back.

"Sorry," I mumbled. My smile faded when Ollie began to talk again.

"Quinn…they didn't twist Norm's arm. You ought to remember that."  
"Norm was a kid, and they weren't. But never mind, that's over. We've got to tell them, guys. The people in the market."  
"If they panic…" Rachel's voice was doubtful.

"Maybe they will and maybe they won't. But it will make them think twice about going out, which is what most of them want to do. Why shouldn't they? Most of them have people they left at home. I do myself. We have to make them understand what they're risking if they go out there."

Her hand was gripping my arm hard. "All right," Ollie said. Then Rachel, "Yes, I just keep asking myself…all those tentacles…like a squid or something…Quinn, What were they hooked to? _What were those tentacles hooked to?_"

"I don't know. But I don't want those two telling people on their own. That _would_ start a panic. Let's go."

I looked around, and after a moment or two located the thin line of vertical light between the swing doors. We started to shuffle toward it; wary of the scattered cartons. One of Ollie's pudgy hands was clamped over my left forearm-Rachel had my right. It occurred to me that all of us had lost our flashlights.

As we reached the doors, Ollie said flatly: "What we saw…it's impossible, Quinn. You know that, don't you? Even if a van from the Seaquarium drove out back and dumped one of those gigantic squids like in _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, _it would die. _It would just die."_

"Yes," I said. "That's right."

"So what happened? Huh? What happened? What is that damned fog?"  
"Ollie, I don't know."

We went out.

**oO0Oo**

**AN: Broke the record for longest chapter, **_**again. **_**:]**

**How is everyone? Still alive I'm hoping. Soooo, here you have it. An update. What do you think now that you've had a taste of what's in the fog? **

**Drop me a review and make my day. Pretty please? With Faberry on top? (Ha, see what I did there?) ;]**


	5. Verification

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 5: Verification**

**Quinn's POV:**

Jim and his good buddy Myron were just outside the doors, each with a Budweiser in his fist. I looked over at the hamburger man, he had fallen asleep with his daughter in his arms and was leaning back on one of the shelves. I walked over to them and covered them both as best I could with the rug-like mover's pad. He moved a little, muttered something, and then lay still again. I looked at my watch. It was 12:15 P.M. That seemed utterly impossible; it felt as if at least five hours had passed since I had first gone in there to look for something to cover the little girl with. But the whole thing, from first to last, had taken only about thirty-five minutes.

I went back to where Rachel and Ollie stood with Jim and Myron. Ollie had taken a beer and he offered me one. I was never one for drinking, especially since the whole Puck thing, but I only hesitated a second before I took it and gulped down half the can at once. It was unceremoniously ripped out of my hands by Rachel, I had been about to complain until I saw the look on her face. I nodded my acceptance as she shoved the can back at Ollie. He, of course, blushed, muttered something, and stepped away from Rachel.

Jim was Jim Grondin. Myron's last name was LaFleur- that had its own comic side, all right. Myron the flower had drying blood on his lips, chin, and cheek. His black eye was already swelling up. The girl in the cranberry-colored sweatshirt walked by aimlessly and gave Myron a cautious look. I could have told her that Myron was only dangerous to teenage boys intent on proving their manhood, but saved my breath. After all, Ollie was right-they _had _only been doing what they thought was best, although in a blind, fearful way rather than in any real common interest. And now I needed them to do what I thought was best. I didn't think that would be a problem. They had both had the stuffing knocked out of them. Neither-especially Myron the flower-was going to be good for anything for some time to come. Something that had been in their eyes when they were fixing to send Norm out to unplug the exhaust vent had gone now. Their peckers were no longer up.

"We're going to have to tell these people something," I said.

Jim opened his mouth to protest.

"We'll leave out any part you and Myron had in sending Norm out there if you'll back up what we say about... well, about what got him."

"Sure," Jim said, pitifully eager. "Sure, if we don't tell, people might go out there ... like that woman ... that woman who ..." He wiped his hand across his mouth and then drank more beer quickly. "Christ, what a mess."

"Quinn," Ollie said. "What-" He stopped, then made himself go on. "What if they get in? The tentacles?"

"How could they?" Jim asked. "You guys shut the door."

"Sure," Ollie said. "But the whole front wall of this place is plate glass."

An elevator shot my stomach down about twenty floors. I had known that, but had somehow been successfully ignoring it. I looked over at Rachel, the same realization and fear shone brightly on her face. I thought of those tentacles swarming over Norm. I thought about that happening to Rachel.

"Plate glass," Myron LaFleur whispered. "Jesus Christ in a chariot-driven sidecar."

I left the four of them standing by the cooler, each (with the exception of Rachel, of course) working a second can of beer, and went looking for Finn and Kurt. I found him in sober-sided conversation with Bud Brown at Register 2. Kurt was nowhere in sight.

As many as two dozen people milled restlessly in the space between the end of the checkout lanes and the long show window. A lot of them were lined up at the glass, looking out into the fog. I was again reminded of the people that congregate at a building site, Mrs. Pepper was seated on the stationary conveyor belt of one of the checkout lanes, smoking a Parliament in a One Step at a Time filter. Her eyes measured me, found me wanting, and passed on. She looked as if she might be dreaming awake.

"Finn," I said.

"Quinn! Where did you guys go?"

"That's what I'd like to talk to you about."

"There are people back at the cooler drinking beer," Brown said grimly. He sounded like a man announcing that X-rated movies had been shown at the deacons' party. "I can see them in the security mirror. This has simply got to stop."

"Finn?"

"Excuse me for a minute, would you, Mr. Brown?"

"Certainly." He folded his arms across his chest and stared grimly up into the convex mirror. "It is going to stop. I can promise you that."

Finn and I headed toward the beer cooler in the far corner of the store, walking past the housewares and notions. I glanced back over my shoulder, noticing uneasily how the wooden beams framing the tall, rectangular sections of glass had buckled and twisted and splintered. One of the windows wasn't even whole, I remembered. A pie-shaped chunk of glass had fallen out of the upper corner at the instant of that weird thump. Perhaps we could stuff it with cloth or something-maybe a bunch of those $3.59 women's tops I had noticed near the wine. My thoughts broke off abruptly, and I had to put the back of my hand over my mouth, as if stifling a burp. What I was really stifling was the rancid flood of horrified giggles that wanted to escape me at the thought of stuffing a bunch of shirts into a hole to keep out those tentacles that had carried Norm away. I had seen one of those tentacles-a small one-squeeze a bag of dog food until it simply ruptured.

"Quinn ? Are you okay?"

"Huh?"

"Your face-you looked like you just had a good idea or something."

Something hit me then. "Finn, what happened to that man who came in raving about something in the fog getting John Lee Frovin?"

"The guy with the nosebleed?"

"Yes, him."

"He passed out and Mr. Brown brought him around with some smelling salts from the

first-aid kit. Why?"

"Did he say anything else when he woke up?"

"He started in on that hall-hallu-ha…," he wore a tight expression, one that I was accustomed to and had since dubbed his 'thinking face'. I decided to help him out because really, he just looked constipated.

"Hallucination?" I supplied gently. No need to hurt his ego, we needed him on our side for this.

"Yeah…so, Mr. Brown sent him up to the office. He was scaring some of the girls. He seemed happy enough to go; something about the glass. When Mr. Brown said there was only one small window in the manager's office, and that that one was protected with wire, he seemed happy enough to go. I think he's still there."

"What he was talking about is no hallucination."

"No, of course it isn't."

"And that thud we felt?"

"No, but, Quinn-"

He's scared, I kept reminding myself. Don't blow up at him, you've treated yourself to one blowup this morning and that's enough. Don't blow up at him just because this is the way he was whenever we'd fight when we were dating... first patronizing, then sarcastic, and finally, when it became clear he was going to lose, ugly. Don't blow up at him because you're going to need him. He may not be able to do something as simple as basic math, but he looks like the kind of guy who people would follow (if only because of his somewhat intimidating height) and if he tells people not to panic, they won't. So don't blow up at him.

"You see those double doors up there beyond the beer cooler?"

He looked, frowning. "Isn't one of those men drinking beer the other assistant manager? If Mr. Brown sees that, he'll probably be fired." I was losing his attention, or he was deflecting-in either case, I was losing my patience with him.

"Finn, will you listen to me?"

He glanced back at me absently. "What were you saying, Quinn? Sorry."

Not as sorry as he was going to be. "Do you see those doors?"

"Yes, what about them?"

"They lead to the storage area that runs all the way along the west face of the building.

A man needed something to cover his daughter with so I went back there to see if I could find something."

I told him everything, only leaving out the argument about whether or not Norm should have gone out at all. I told him what had come in...and finally, what had gone out, screaming. Finn Hudson refused to believe it. No-he refused to even entertain it. I took him over to Rachel, Jim, Ollie, and Myron. All four of them verified the story, although Jim and Myron the flower were well on their way to getting drunk. Again, Finn refused to believe or even to entertain it. He simply balked. "No," he said.

"No, no, no. That's completely unreal. Either you're trying to make me look stupid" - he patronized us with his gleaming smile to show that he could take a joke as well as the next guy- "or you're suffering from some kind of group hypnosis."

My temper rose again, and I controlled it - with difficulty. I don't think that I'm ordinarily a quick-tempered girl, but these weren't ordinary circumstances. I had Rachel to think about, and what was happening-or what had already happened-to my mother. Those things were constantly gnawing at the back of my mind.

"All right," I said. "Let's go back there. There's a chunk of tentacle on the floor. The door cut it off when it came down. And you can _hear _them. They're rustling all over that door. It sounds like the wind in ivy."

"No," he said calmly.

"What?" I really did believe I had misheard him. "What did you say?''

"I said no, I'm not going back there. The joke has gone far enough."

"Finn, I swear to you it's no joke."

"Of course it is," he snapped. His eyes ran over Jim, Myron, Ollie, rested briefly on Rachel-who held his glance with calm impassivity, like she was already expecting this reaction-and at last came back to me. "You're just trying to make me look dumb. Right, Quinn?"

"Finn...look-"

"No, you look!" His voice began to rise toward a courtroom shout. It carried very, very well, and several of the people who were wandering around, edgy and aimless, looked over to see what was going on. Finn jabbed his finger at me as he spoke. "It's a joke. It's a banana skin and I'm the guy that's supposed to slip on it. I get it, none of you are exactly my biggest fans right now, am I right? Now you've all decided to gang up on me. The way it happened when you cheated on me and everyone went back to being your friend. You won that one, all right. Why not? Your father had kicked poor-little you out!" He was no longer performing, hectoring us with the trained tantrum-like shout; he was nearly screaming and on the verge of losing all control. Ollie turned and walked away, clutching his beer. Myron and his friend Jim were staring at Finn with frank amazement. Rachel was just as shocked as I was that he'd gone _there._

"Am I supposed to go back there and look at some ninety-eight-cent rubber toy while these two pricks stand around and laugh their asses off?" He didn't mention Rachel, and I was glad. My patience was wearing thin by then, he was tearing open year old wounds that hadn't completely healed yet and I don't think I could've handled him insulting Rachel on top of it.

"Hey, you want to watch who you're calling a prick," Myron said.

"I'm _glad _that your dad decided to kick you out, if you want to know the truth. _Glad." _Finn was grinning savagely at me. "Karma's a bitch, isn't it? Fantastic. Now get out of my way."

He tried to push past me. I grabbed him by the arm and threw him against the beer cooler. A woman cawed in surprise and I found myself grateful for Sue Silvester for the second time that night. Two six-packs of Bud fell over.

"Dig out your ears and listen, Hudson. There are lives at stake here. Rachel's is not the least of them. So you listen, or I swear I'll knock the shit out of you."

"Go ahead," Finn said, still grinning with a kind of insane palsied bravado. His eyes, bloodshot and wide, bulged from their sockets. "Show everyone how big and brave you are with this new stupid look of yours."

"Sock him anyway!" Jim exclaimed.

"You keep out of it," I said to Jim, and then put my face down to Finn's. I was kissing distance, if that had been what I had in mind. The cooler was off, but it was still radiating a chill. "Stop throwing up sand. You know damn well I'm telling the truth."

"I know ... no ... such thing," he panted.

"If it was another time and place, I'd let you get away with it. I don't care how scared you are, and I'm not keeping score. I'm scared, too. But I need you, goddammit! Does that get through? I need you!"

"Let me go!"

I grabbed him by the shirt and shook him. "Don't you understand anything? People are going to start leaving and walk right into that thing out there! For Christ's sake, don't you understand?"

_"Let me _go!"

"Not until you come back there with me and see for yourself."

"I told you, no! It's all a trick, a joke, I'm not as stupid as you think I-"

"Then I'll haul you back there myself."

I grabbed him by the shoulder and the scruff of his neck. The scam of his shirt under one arm tore with a soft purring sound. I dragged him toward the double doors. Finn let out a wretched scream. A knot of people, fifteen or eighteen, had gathered, but they kept their distance. None showed any signs of wanting to interfere.

"Help me!" Finn cried. His eyes bulged and his hair had gone awry, sticking up in two little tufts behind his ears. People shuffled their feet and watched.

"What are you screaming for?" I said in his ear. "It's just a joke, right? That's why I _accidentally _bumped into you here-because I had this handy fog all manufactured, I rented a fog machine from Hollywood, it cost me fifteen thousand dollars and another eight thousand dollars to ship it, all so I could play a joke on you. Stop bullshitting yourself and open your eyes!"

"Let... me _... go!" _Finn bawled. We were almost at the doors.

"Here, here! What is this? What are you doing?" It was Brown. He bustled and elbowed his way through the crowd of watchers.

"Make her let me go," Finn said hoarsely. "She's crazy!"

"No. She's not crazy. I wish she were, but she isn't." That was Rachel, and I could have blessed her. She came around the aisle behind us with Ollie in tow and the stood there facing Brown. Brown's eyes dropped to the beer Ollie was holding. "You're _drinking!" _he said, and his voice was surprised but not totally devoid of pleasure. "You'll lose your job for this."

"Come on, Bud," I said, letting Finn go. "This is no ordinary situation."

"Regulations don't change," Brown said smugly. "I'll see that the company hears of it. That's my responsibility."

Finn, meanwhile, had skittered away and stood at some distance, trying to straighten his shirt and smooth back his hair. His eyes darted between Brown and me nervously.

_"Hey!" _Rachelcried suddenly, raising her voice and producing a bass thunder I never would have suspected- but should have expected if her singing voice was anything to go by._"_Hey! Everybody in the store! You want to come up back and hear this! It concerns all of you!" She looked at me levelly, ignoring Brown and Finn altogether. "Am I doing all right?"

"Perfect," I said a little dazed.

People began to gather. The original knot of spectators to my argument with Finn doubled, then trebled.

"There's something you all had better know-" Rachel began.

"Rachel-," Finn started, but I was done with him.

"You shut up right now," I said, and took a step toward him. Finncompetent wasn't all that stupid after all, he took a compensatory step back.

"I don't know what some of you think you're doing," Brown spoke up, "but I can tell you it's going to be reported to the Federal Foods Company! All of it! And I want you to understand-there may be charges!" His lips drew nervously back from his yellowed teeth, and I could feel sympathy for him. Just trying to cope; that was all he was doing. As Finn was by imposing a mental gag order on himself. Myron and Jim had tried by turning the whole thing into a macho charade-if the generator could be fixed, the fog would blow over. This was Brown's way. He was_..._Protecting the Store.

"Then you go ahead and take down the names," I said. "But please don't talk."

"I'll take down plenty of names," he responded. "Yours will be head on the list, you _...you bohemian."_

"Ms. Quinn Fabray has got something to tell you," Rachel said, "and I think you had all better listen up, in case you were planning on going home."

So I told them what had happened, pretty much as I told Finn. There was some laughter at first, then a deepening uneasiness as I finished.

"It's a lie, you know," Finn said. His voice tried for hard emphasis and overshot into stridency. This was the guy I'd told first, hoping to enlist his credibility. What a balls-up.

"Of course it's a lie," Brown agreed. "It's lunacy. Where do you suppose those tentacles came from, Ms. Fabray?"

"I don't know, and at this point, that's not even a very important question. They're here.

There's-"

"I suspect they came out of a few of those beer cans. That's what I suspect." This got some appreciative laughter. It was silenced by the strong, rusty-hinge voice of Mrs. Pepper.

"Death!" she cried, and those who had been laughing quickly sobered.

She marched into the center of the rough circle that had formed, her canary pants seeming to give off a light of their own, her huge purse swinging against one elephantine thigh. Her black eyes glanced arrogantly around, as sharp and balefully sparkling as a magpie's. Two girls of about sixteen with CAMP LIMA written on the back of their white rayon shirts shrank away from her.

"You listen but you don't hear! You hear but you don't believe! Which one of you wants to go outside and see for himself?" Her eyes swept them, and then fell on me. "And just what do you propose to do about it, Ms. Quinn Fabray? What do you think you can do about it?"

She grinned, skull-like above her canary outfit.

"It's the end, I tell you. The end of everything. It's the Last Times. The moving finger has writ, not in fire, but in lines of fog. The earth has opened and spewed forth its abominations-"

"Can't you make her shut up?" one of the teenage girls burst out. She was beginning to cry. "She's scaring me!"

"Are you scared, dearie?" Mrs. Pepper asked, and turned on her. "You aren't scared now, no. But when the foul creatures the imp has loosed upon the face of the earth come for you-"

"That's enough now, Mrs. Pepper," Ollie said, taking her arm. "That's just fine."

"You let go of me! It's the end, I tell you! It's death! Death! "

"It's a pile of shit," a man in a fishing hat and glasses said disgustedly.

"No, sir," Myron spoke up. "I know it sounds like something out of a dope-dream, but it's the flat-out truth. I saw it myself."

"I did, too," Jim said.

"And me," Ollie said.

"So did I," Rachel chipped in.

Ollie had succeeded in quieting Mrs. Pepper, at least for the time being. But she stood close by, clutching her big purse and grinning her crazy grin. No one wanted to stand too close to her-they muttered among themselves, not liking the corroboration. Several of them looked back at the big plate-glass windows in an uneasy, speculative way. I was glad to see it.

"Lies," Finn said. "You always lie. You're a liar, that's all."

"What you're suggesting is totally beyond belief," Brown said.

"We don't have to stand here chewing it over," I told him. "Come back into the storage area with me. Take a look and a listen."

"Customers are not allowed in the-"

"Bud," Ollie said, "go with him. Let's settle this."

"All right," Brown said. "Ms. Fabray? Let's get this foolishness over with."

We pushed through the double doors into the darkness. The sound was unpleasant-perhaps evil. Brown felt it, too, for all his hardheaded Yankee manner; his hand clutched my arm immediately, his breath caught for a moment and then resumed more harshly. It was a low whispering sound from the direction of the loading door-an almost caressing sound. I swept around gently with one foot and finally struck one of the flashlights. I bent down, got it, and turned it on. Brown's face was tightly drawn, and he hadn't even seen them-he was only hearing them; But I had seen, and I could imagine them twisting and climbing over the corrugated steel surface of the door like living vines.

"What do you think now? Totally beyond belief?"

Brown licked his lips and looked at the littered confusion of boxes and bags. "They did this?"

"Some of it. Most of it. Come over here."

He came reluctantly. I spotted the flashlight on the shriveled and curled section of tentacle, still lying by the push broom. Brown bent toward it.

"Don't touch that," I said. "It may still be alive."

He straightened up quickly. I picked up the broom by the bristles and prodded the tentacle. The third or fourth poke caused it to unclench sluggishly and reveal two whole suckers and a ragged segment of a third. Then the fragment coiled again with muscular speed and lay still. Brown made a gagging, disgusted sound.

"Seen enough?"

"Yes," he said. "Let's get out of here."

We followed the bobbing light back to the double doors and pushed through them. All the faces turned toward us, and the hum of conversation died. Finn's face was like old cheese. Mrs. Pepper's black eyes glinted. Rachel was waiting impatiently and Ollie was drinking beer; his face was still running with trickles of perspiration, although it had gotten rather chilly in the market. The two girls with CAMP LIMA on their shirts were huddled together like young horses before a thunderstorm. Eyes. So many eyes. I could paint them, I thought with a chill. No faces, only eyes in the gloom. I could paint them but no one would believe they were real.

Bud Brown folded his long-fingered hands primly in front of him. "People," he said. "It appears we have a problem of some magnitude here."

**oO0Oo**

**AN: DUNDUNDUUUUUUUUUN! Glad to see me back? Of course you are, I came bearing an update! I apologize for the hiatus, a lot of shit happened all at once in my life and it became a bit overwhelming. No worries, I'm back now and can hopefully supply you with regular updates from now on (yes, shocking!). Tell me what you think? Comments, questions, concerns, ect. etc. let me know, drop me a review and make my day in the process. :]**


	6. Fortifications

**Warning: *waves arms frantically in the air* …you have been warned.**

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 6: Fortifications**

**Quinn's POV:**

The next four hours passed in a kind of dream. There was a long and semi-hysterical discussion following Brown's confirmation, or maybe the discussion wasn't as long as it seemed; maybe it was just the grim necessity of people chewing over the same information, trying to see if from every possible point of view, working it the way a dog works a bone, trying to get at the marrow. It was a slow coming to belief.

There was the Flat-Earth Society (as I'd smartly dubbed them), headed by Finn. They were a vocal minority of about ten who believed none of it. Finn pointed out over and over again that there were only four witnesses to the bag-boy being carried off by what he called the Tentacles from Planet X (it was good for a laugh the first time, but it wore thin quickly; Finn, in his increasing agitation, seemed not to notice). He added that he personally did not trust one of the four. He further pointed out that half of the witnesses were now hopelessly drunk. That was unquestionably true. Jim and Myron LaFleur, with the entire beer cooler and wine rack at their disposal, were abysmally shitfaced. Considering what had happened to Norm, and their part in it, I didn't blame them. They would sober off all too soon.

Ollie continued to drink steadily, ignoring Brown's protests. After a while Brown gave up, contenting himself with an occasional baleful threat about the Company. He didn't seem to realize that Federal Foods, Inc., with its stores in Columbus, North Windham, and Portland, might not even exist anymore. For all we knew, the Eastern Seaboard might no longer exist. Ollie drank steadily, but didn't get drunk. He was sweating it out as rapidly as he could put it in.

At last, as the discussion with the Flat-Earthers was becoming acrimonious, Ollie spoke up. "If you don't believe it, _Finn_, that's fine. I'll tell you what to do. You go on out that front door and walk around to the back. There's a great big pile of returnable beer and soda bottles there. Norm and Buddy and I put them out this morning. You bring back a couple of those bottles so we know you really went back there. You do that and I'll personally take my shirt off and eat it."

Finn began to bluster.

Ollie cut him off in the same soft, even voice. "I tell you, you're not doing anything but damage talking the way you are. There're people here that want to go home and make sure their families are okay. My sister and her year-old daughter are at home in Colombus right now. I'd like to check on them, sure. But if people start believing you and try to go home, what happened to Norm is going to happen to them."

He didn't convince Finn, but he convinced some of the leaners and fence sitters-it wasn't what he said so much as it was his eyes, his haunted eyes. I think Finn's sanity hinged on not being convinced, or he thought it did. But he didn't take Ollie up on his offer to bring back a sampling of returnables from out back. None of them did. They weren't ready to go out, at least not yet. He and his little group of Flat-Earthers (reduced by one or two now) went as far away from the rest of us as they could get, over by the prepared-meats case.

I went over to the back of the store and sat down where I'd been sitting earlier, Rachel did the same. The hamburger man's daughter was stirring awake. Rachel broke the silence.

"We're kind of friends, right?" she asked softly. It was completely out of the blue and I really didn't know how to answer.

"Kind of," I said just as softly. She smiled faintly and I found myself returning the gesture. She looked hesitant at first but then grabbed my hand and drew my arm around her shoulders. I tensed a bit as she snuggled closer but eventually relaxed and just let it happen. She sighed contently and I found myself unable to wipe the goofy smile off my face.

Meanwhile, with the Flat-Earthers having withdrawn, the argument had found another lightning rod-this time it was Mrs. Pepper, and understandably enough, she stood alone. In the faded, dismal light she was witchlike in her blazing canary pants, her bright rayon blouse, her armloads of clacking junk jewelry - copper, tortoiseshell, adamantine-and her thyroidal purse. Her parchment face was grooved with strong vertical lines. Her frizzy gray hair was yanked flat with three horn combs and twisted in the back. Her mouth was a line of knotted rope. Rachel and I stood up and walked a little closer, so we could hear what was being said.

"There is no defense against the will of God. This has been coming. I have seen the signs. There are those here that I have told, but there are none so blind as those who will not see."

"Well, what are you saying? What are you proposing?" Mike Haden broke in impatiently. He was a town selectman, although he didn't look the part now, in his yachtsman's cap and saggy-seated Bermudas. He was sipping at a beer; a great many men were doing it now. Bud Brown had given up protesting, but he was indeed taking names-keeping a rough tab on everyone he could.

"Proposing?" Mrs. Pepper echoed, wheeling toward Haden. "Proposing? Why, I am proposing that you prepare to meet your God, Michael Haden." She gazed around at all of us. "Prepare to meet your God!"

"Prepare to meet shit," Myron LaFleur said in a drunken snarl from the beer cooler. "Old woman, I believe your tongue must be hung in the middle so it can run on both ends." There was a rumble of agreement. Rachel looked on nervously so I pulled her closer to my side. I didn't like where this was going either.

"I'll have my say!" she cried. Her upper lip curled back, revealing snaggle teeth that were yellow with nicotine. I thought of the dusty stuffed animals in her shop, drinking eternally at the mirror that served as their creek. "Doubters will doubt to the end! Yet a monstrosity did drag that poor boy away! Things in the fog! Every abomination out of a bad dream! Eyeless freaks! Pallid horrors! Do you doubt? Then go on out! Go on out and say howdy-do! "

"Mrs. Pepper, you'll have to stop," I said. "You're freaking people out."

The man with the little girl echoed the sentiment. She, all plump legs and scabby knees, had hidden her face against her father's stomach and put her hands over her ears.

"There's only one chance," Mrs. Pepper said.

"What's that, ma'am?" Mike Haden asked politely.

"A sacrifice," Mrs. Pepper said-she seemed to grin in the gloom. "A blood sacrifice." _Blood _sacrifice - the words hung there, slowly turning. I tried to tell myself that what she meant was someone's pet dog - there were a couple of them trotting around the market in spite of the regulations against them. Double emphasize _tried. _She looked like some crazed remnant of New England Puritanism in the gloom ... but I suspect that something deeper and darker than mere Puritanism motivated her. Puritanism had its own dark grandfather, old Adam with bloody hands.

She opened her mouth to say something more, and a small, neat man in red pants and a natty sport shirt struck her openhanded across the face. His hair was parted with ruler evenness on the left. He wore glasses. He also wore the unforgettable look of the summer tourist.

"You shut up that bad talk," he said softly and tonelessly.

Mrs. Pepper put her hand to her mouth and then held it out to us, a wordless accusation. There was blood on the palm, but her black eyes seemed to dance with mad glee.

"You had it coming!" a woman cried out. "I would have done it myself!"

"They'll get a hold of you," Mrs. Pepper said, showing us her bloody palm. The trickle of blood was now running down one of the wrinkles from her mouth to her chin like a droplet of rain down a gutter. "Not today, maybe. Tonight. Tonight when the dark comes. They'll come with the night and take someone else. With the night they'll come. You'll hear them coming, creeping and crawling. And when they come, you'll beg for Mother Pepper to show you what to do."

The man in the red pants raised his hand slowly.

"You come on and hit me," she whispered, and grinned her bloody grin at him. His hand wavered. "Hit me if you dare." His hand dropped. Mrs. Pepper walked away by herself.

Then the hamburger man's daughter began to cry. "I want to go home," she said. "I want to see my mommy." He comforted her as best he could.

The talk finally turned into less frightening and destructive channels. The plate-glass windows, the market's obvious weak point, were mentioned. Rachel asked what other entrances there were, and Ollie and Brown quickly ticked them off-two loading doors in addition to the one Norm had opened. The main IN-OUT doors. The window in the manager's office (thick, reinforced glass, securely locked).

Talking about these things had a paradoxical effect. It made the danger seem more real but at the same time made us feel better. A man near Mike Haden said, "Okay, what are we going to do about those windows? The old lady may be as crazy as a bedbug, but she could be right about something moving in after dark."

"Maybe the fog will blow over by then," a woman said.

"Maybe," the man said. "And maybe not."

"Any ideas?" I asked.

"Hold on a sec," the man near Haden said. "I'm Dan Miller. From Lynn, Mass. You don't know me, no reason why you should, but I saw a whole pile of fertilizer and lawn-food bags back in aisle 10. Twenty-five-pound sacks, most of them. We could put them up like sandbags. Leave loopholes to look out through..."

Now more people were nodding and talking excitedly. I almost said something, then held it back. Miller was right. Putting those bags up could do no harm, and might do some good. But my mind went back to that tentacle squeezing the dog-food bag. I thought that one of the bigger tentacles could probably do the same for a twenty-five-pound bag of Green Acres lawn food or Vigoro. But a sermon on that wouldn't get us out or improve anyone's mood.

People began to break up, talking about getting it done, and Miller yelled: "Hold it! Hold it! Let's thrash this out while we're all together! "

They came back, a loose congregation of fifty or sixty people in the corner formed by the beer cooler, the storage doors, and the left end of the meat case, where Mr. McVey always seems to put the things no one wants, like sweetbreads and Scotch eggs and sheep's brains and head cheese.

"This is probably a stupid question," Miller resumed, "but we ought to fill in the blanks. Anyone got any firearms?"

There was a pause. People looked around at each other and shrugged. An old man with grizzled white hair who introduced himself as Ambrose Cornell said he had a shotgun in the trunk of his car. "I'll try for it, if you want."

Ollie said, "Right now I don't think that would be a good idea, Mr. Cornell." Cornell grunted.

"Right now, neither do I, son. But I thought I ought to make the offer."

"Well, I didn't really think so," Dan Miller said. "But I thought-"

"Wait, hold it a minute," someone said. It was the girl I'd bumped into earlier. _What was her name? _I felt Rachel tense for some reason. The girl opened her purse and from it she produced a medium-sized pistol. The crowd made an _ahhhh-ing_ sound_, _as if they had just seen a magician do a particularly fine trick. The girl, who I could now guess was probably a couple of years older than me, blushed at the attention. She rooted in her purse again and brought out a box of Smith & Wesson ammunition.

"I'm Amanda Dumfries," she said to Miller. "This gun...my father's idea. He thought I should have it for protection. I've carried it unloaded for two years."

"Is your father here, ma'am?"

"No, he's in New York. On business. He's gone on business a lot. That's why he wanted me to carry the gun."

"Well," Miller said, "if you can use it, you ought to keep it. What is it, a thirty-eight?''

"Yes. And I've never fired it in my life except on a target range once."

Miller took the gun, fumbled around, and got the cylinder to open after a few moments. He checked to make sure it was not loaded. "Okay," he said. "We got a gun. Who shoots good? I sure don't."

People glanced at each other. No one said anything at first. Then, reluctantly, Ollie said: "I target-shoot quite a lot. I have a Colt .45 and a Llama .25."

"You?" Brown said. "Huh. You'll be too drunk to see by dark."

Ollie said very clearly, "Why don't you just shut up and write down your names?"

Brown goggled at him. Opened his mouth. Then decided, wisely, I think, to shut it again.

"It's yours," Miller said, blinking a little at the exchange. He handed it over and Ollie checked it again, more professionally. He put the gun into his right-front pants pocket and slipped the cartridge box into his breast pocket, where it made a bulge like a pack of cigarettes. Then he leaned back against the cooler, round face still trickling sweat, and cracked a fresh beer. The sensation that I was seeing a totally unsuspected Ollie Weeks persisted.

"Thank you, Ms. Dumfries," Miller said.

"Don't mention it," she said, and glanced at me briefly.

"This may be silly, too," Miller said, turning back to Brown with his clipboard and Ollie with his beer, "but there aren't anything like flamethrowers in the place, are there?"

"Ohhh, shit," Buddy Eagleton said, and then went as red as Amanda Dumfries had gone.

"What is it?" Mike Haden asked.

"Well ... until last week we had a whole case of those little blowtorches. The kind you use around your house to solder leaky pipes or mend your exhaust system or whatever. You remember those, Mr. Brown?" Brown nodded, looking sour.

"Sold out?" Miller asked.

"No, they didn't go at all. We only sold three or four and sent the rest of the case back. What a pisser. I mean...what a shame." Blushing so deeply he was almost purple, Buddy Eagleton retired into the background again. We had matches, of course, and salt (someone said vaguely that he had heard salt was the thing to put on bloodsuckers and things like that); and all kinds of O'Cedar mops and long-handled brooms. Most of the people continued to look heartened, and Jim and Myron were too plotzo to sound a dissenting note, but I met Ollie's eyes and saw a calm hopelessness in them that was worse than fear. He and I had seen the tentacles. The idea of throwing salt on them or trying to fend them off with the handles of O'Cedar mops was funny, in a ghastly way.

"Mike," Miller said, "why don't you crew this little adventure? I want to talk to Ollie and Quinn here for a minute."

"Glad to." Haden clapped Dan Miller on the shoulder. "Somebody had to take charge, and you did it good. Welcome to town."

"Does this mean I get a kickback on my taxes?" Miller asked. He was a banty little guy with red hair that was receding. He looked like the sort of guy you can't help liking on short notice and-just maybe-the kind of guy you can't help not liking after he's been around for a while. The kind of guy who knows how to do everything better than you do.

"No way," Haden said, laughing. Haden walked off. Miller glanced down at Rachel.

"Don't worry about Rachel," I said.

"Man, I've never been so worried in my whole life," Miller said.

"No," Ollie agreed, and dropped an empty into the beer cooler. He got a fresh one and opened it. There was a soft hiss of escaping gas.

Rachel handed me an open Hershey bar, I gave her a questioning look.

"Energy," she mumbled softly.

"Thank you," I said and absentmindedly ate it.

"Tell you what I think," Miller said. "We ought to get half a dozen people to wrap some of those mop handles with cloth and then tie them down with twine. Then I think we ought to get a couple of those cans of charcoal lighter fluid all ready. If we cut the tops right off the cans, we could have some torches pretty quick." I nodded. That was good. Almost surely not good enough-not if you had seen Norm dragged out-but it was better than salt.

"That would give them something to think about, at least," Ollie said. Miller's lips pressed together.

"That bad, huh?" He said.

"That bad," Ollie agreed, and worked his beer.

By four-thirty that afternoon the sacks of fertilizer and lawn food were in place and the big windows were blocked off except for narrow loopholes. A watchman had been placed at each of these, and beside each watchman was a tin of charcoal lighter fluid with the top cut off and a supply of mop-handle torches. There were five loopholes, and Dan Miller had arranged a rotation of sentries for each one. When four-thirty came around, I was sitting on a pile of bags at one of the loopholes, Rachel at my side. We were looking out into the fog.

Just beyond the window was a red bench where people sometimes waited for their rides with their groceries beside them. Beyond that was the parking lot. The fog swirled slowly, thick and heavy. There was moisture in it, but how dull it seemed, and gloomy. Just looking at it made me feel gutless and lost.

"Quinn…do you know what's happening?" Rachel asked softly. I didn't know why, but the question seemed rhetorical.

"Not really," I said.

She fell silent for a bit, looking at her hands, which lay limply in the lap of her checkered skirt.

"Why doesn't somebody come and rescue us?" she asked finally. "The State Police or the FBI or someone?"

"I don't know. Are…are you okay?" I asked. I knew emotionally, she probably wasn't. I wasn't fairing much better myself, but I still had to ask.

"I don't know," she said, and I put an arm around her. For some reason, my emotions got the better of me again, and after a few seconds I spoke.

"I'm so sorry Rachel," I choked, struggling with tears. "I'm sorry about all the times I was horrible to you."

"Quinn," she said, "I forgave you for that a long time ago. I know you had your reasons."

"That doesn't justify it!" I said through clenched teeth. I had to take a deep breath, the tears I had been holding on to started leaking out of my eyes.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"I know," she said and put her face in the hollow of my shoulder. I held the back of her head, felt the delicate curve of her skull just under the thick growth of her hair.

I was crying.

"Shh, Quinn, it's okay," Rachel said. Our positions switched before I could register what happened. She was rocking me, holding me against her shoulder, but I went on crying. It was the sort of crying that only mothers know how to fix right. For me, that usually meant crying myself to sleep.

"I really do like your new hairstyle," she said and I choked out a laugh. She was trying to make me feel better.

Premature night came inside the Federal Foods. Miller and Haden and Bud Brown handed out flashlights, the whole stock, about twenty. Finn clamored loudly for them on behalf of his group, and received two. The lights bobbed here and there in the aisles like uneasy phantoms.

I held Rachel against me (our positions had switched once more once I managed to get a hold of myself) and looked out through the loophole. The milky, translucent quality of the light out there hadn't changed much; it was putting up the bags that had made the market so dark. Several times I thought I saw something, but it was only jumpiness. One of the others raised a hesitant false alarm.

We saw Kurt again, and Rachel seemed to brighten a bit at the sight of her (best?) friend. He came over and sat across from us. He had two of the flashlights and handed one over to Rachel amiably enough. She seemed as happy to see him as he was to see her, and if he thought our position was strange, he didn't comment.

"Where have you been, Kurt?" Rachel asked him. Kurt's expression turned downcast.

"I've been trying to gather more information about our…situation," he said.

"Any luck?" I asked, but already knew the answer by his expression. He shook his head.

"Is your mom here, Quinn?" he asked.

"No. At home."

He nodded. "My dad, too. How long are you on watch here?"

"Until six."

"Have you seen anything?"

"No. Just the fog."

"I can keep you guys company, if you'd like."

"Sure," I said as Rachel nodded her head.

"We're going to be okay," he said after a moment of silence. He spoke with serene sureness, but there was no conviction in his eyes.

Around five-thirty the sounds of excited argument rose near the back of the store. Someone jeered at something someone else had said, and someone-it was Buddy Eagleton, I think-shouted, "You're crazy if you go out there!"

Several of the flashlight beams pooled together at the center of the controversy, and they moved toward the front of the store. Mrs. Pepper's shrieking, derisive laugh split the gloom, as abrasive as fingers drawn down a slate blackboard.

Above the babble of voices came the boom of Finn's _listen-to-me! _voice: "Let us pass! Let us pass!"

The man at the loophole next to mine left his place to see what the shouting was about. We decided to stay where we were. Whatever the concatenation was, it was coming our way.

"Please," Mike Hatlen was saying. "Please, let's talk this thing through."

"There is nothing to talk about," Finn proclaimed. Now his face swam out of the gloom. It was determined and haggard and wholly wretched. He was holding one of the two flashlights allocated to the Flat-Earthers. The corkscrewed tufts of hair still stuck up behind his ears like a cuckold's horns. He was at the head of an extremely small procession-five of the original nine or ten.

"We are going out," he said.

"Don't stick to this craziness," Miller said. "Mike's right. We can talk it over, can't we? Mr. McVey is going to barbecue some chicken over the gas grill, we can all sit down and eat and just-"

He got in Finn's way and Finn gave him a push. Miller didn't like it. His face flushed and then set in a hard expression. "Do what you want, then," he said. "But you're as good as murdering these other people."

With all the evenness of great resolve or unbreakable obsession, Finn said: "We'll send help back for you."

One of his followers murmured agreement, but another quietly slipped away. Now there was Finn and four others. Maybe that wasn't so bad. Christ Himself could only find twelve.

"Listen," Mike Hatlen said. "Mr. Hudson - Finn - at least stay for the chicken. Get some hot food inside you."

"And give you a chance to go on talking? I know what'll happen if I do, I'm not stupid. You've psyched out six of my people already."

"Your people?" Kurt spoke up, almost _groaned_. He was standing now. "Your people? What kind of talk is that, Finn? They're _people, _that's all. This is no game, and it's surely not Glee club. There are, for want of a better word, there are _things _out there, and what's the sense of getting yourself killed?"

"Things," Finn said, sounding superficially amused. "Where? Your people have been on watch for a couple of hours now. Who's seen one?"

"Well, out back. In the-"

"No, no, no," Finn said, shaking his head and covered his ears. He ran his hand through his hair and down his face, dropping them to his sides, making his hair stick up more hazardously. There was a maniacal gleam in his eyes. "That ground has been covered and covered. We're going out-"

"No," someone whispered, and it echoed and spread, sounding like the rustle of dead leaves at dusk of an October evening. _No, no, no..._

"Will you restrain us?" a shrill voice asked. This was one of Finn's "people," to use his

word-an elderly lady wearing bifocals. "Will you restrain us?"

The soft babble of negatives died away.

"No," Kurt said. "No, I don't think anyone will restrain you." He seemed resigned, defeated.

I whispered in Rachel's ear. She looked at me, startled and questioning. "Please," I said. "Be quick."

She went.

Finn ran his hands through his hair again, a gesture as calculated as any ever made by a Broadway actor. I had liked him better when he was kicking over chairs in the Glee club, where any injuries he could've caused would've been minor. I could not tell if he believed in what he was doing or not. I think, down deep, that he knew what was going to happen. I think that the version of logic (and I use that word loosely) he had paid lip service to all his life turned on him at the end like a tiger that has gone bad and mean.

He looked around restlessly, seeming to wish that there was more to say. Then he led his four followers through one of the checkout lanes. In addition to the elderly woman, there was a chubby boy of about twelve, a young girl, and a man in blue jeans wearing a golf cap tipped back on his head.

Finn's eyes caught mine, widened a little, and then started to swing away.

"Finn, wait a minute," I said.

"I don't want to discuss it anymore. Especially with you."

"I know you don't. I just want to ask a favor." I looked around and saw Rachel coming back toward the checkouts at a jog.

"What's that?" Finn asked suspiciously as Rachel came up and handed me a package done up in cellophane.

"Clothesline," I said. I was vaguely aware that everyone in the market was watching us now, loosely strung out on the other side of the cash registers and checkout lanes. "It's the big package. Three hundred feet."

"So?"

"I wondered if you'd tie one end around your waist before you go out. I'll let it out. When you feel it come up tight, just tie it around something. It doesn't matter what. A car door handle would do."

"What for?"

"It will tell me you got at least three hundred feet," I said.

Something in his eyes flickered ... but only momentarily. "No," he said. I shrugged. "Okay. Good luck, anyhow."

"I'll do it," Kurt abruptly said.

"Kurt-"

"No-"

Rachel and I started at the same time, and were both cut off.

"He's my brother," he said and I didn't know how to counter that. Rachel didn't seem to know how either.

Finn swung on him, as if to say something sharp, and Kurt studied him calmly. There was nothing flickering in his eyes. He had made his decision and there was simply no doubt in him. Finn saw it too and said nothing.

"Thank you," I said.

I slit the wrapping with my pocketknife and the clothesline accordioned out in stiff loops. I found one loose end and tied it around Kurt's waist in a loose granny. He immediately untied it and cinched it tighter with a good quick sheet-bend knot. There was not a sound in the market. Finn shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

"You want to take my knife?" I asked Kurt.

He nodded and I handed it to him. He looked at me with that same calm contempt. "Just keep paying out the line. If it binds up, I'll cut it."

"Are we all ready?" Finn asked, too loud. The chubby boy jumped as if he had been goosed. Getting no response, Finn turned to go.

"Finn," I said, and held out my hand. "Good luck, man."

He studied my hand as if it were some dubious foreign object. "We'll send back help," he said finally, and pushed through the OUT door. That thin, acrid smell came in again. The others followed him out.

Mike Hatlen came down and stood beside Rachel and me. Finn's party of five stood in the milky, slow-moving fog. Finn said something and I should have heard it, but the fog seemed to have an odd damping effect. I heard nothing but the sound of his voice and two or three isolated syllables, like the voice on the radio heard from some distance. They moved off.

Hatlen held the door a little way open. I paid out the clothesline, keeping as much slack in it as I could, mindful of the Kurt's promise to cut the rope if it bound him up. There was still not a sound. Rachel stood beside me, motionless but seeming to thrum with her own inner current.

Again there was that weird feeling that the five of them did not so much disappear into the fog as become invisible. For a moment their clothes seemed to stand alone, and then they were gone. You were not really impressed with the unnatural density of the fog until you saw people swallowed up in a space of seconds.

I paid the line out. A quarter of it went, then a half. It stopped going out for a moment. It went from a live thing to a dead one in my hands. I held my breath. Then it started to go out again. I paid it through my fingers, and suddenly remembered my mother taking me to see the Gregory Peck film of _Moby Dick _when I was younger. I think I smiled a little.

Three-quarters of the line was gone now. I could see the end of it lying beside one of Rachel's feet. Then the rope stopped moving through my hands again. It lay motionless for perhaps five seconds, and then another five feet jerked out. Then it suddenly whipsawed violently to the left, twanging off the edge of the OUT door. Twenty feet of rope suddenly paid out, making a thin heat across my left palm. From out of the fog there came a high, wavering scream. It was impossible to tell the sex of the screamer. The rope whipsawed in my hands again. And again. It skated across the space in the doorway to the right, then back to the left. A few more feet paid out, and then there was a ululating howl from out there that brought an answering pained moan from Rachel. Hatlen stood aghast. His eyes were huge. One corner of his mouth turned down, trembling.

The howl was abruptly cut off.

There was no sound at all for what seemed to be forever. Then the old lady cried out-this time there could be no doubt about who it was. "_Get it offa me!_" she screamed. " Oh _my Lord my Lord get it-"_

Then her voice was cut off, too.

Almost all of the rope abruptly ran out through my loosely closed fist, giving me a hotter burn this time. Then it went completely slack, and a sound came out of the fog - a thick, loud grunt-that made all the spit in my mouth dry up. It was like no sound I've ever heard, but the closest approximation might be a movie set in the African veld or a South American swamp. It was the sound of a big animal. It came again, low and tearing and savage. Once more...and then it subsided to a series of low mutterings. Then it was completely gone.

"Close the door," Amanda Dumfries said in a trembling voice. "Please."

"In a minute," I said, and began to yank the line back in.

It came out of the fog and piled up around my feet in untidy loops and snarls. About three feet from the end, the new white clothesline went barn-red.

"Death!" Mrs. Pepper screamed. "Death to go out there! Now do you see?"

The end of the clothesline was a chewed and frayed tangle of fiber and little puffs of cotton. The little puffs were dewed with minute drops of blood.

No one contradicted Mrs. Pepper.

Mike Hatlen let the door swing shut.

**oO0Oo**

**AN: Thoughts?**


	7. The First Night

**JUST SO YOU KNOW: I'm ignoring the Lucy Caboosey story line. Keep that in mind.**

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 7: The First Night**

**Quinn's POV:**

Mr. McVey had worked in Lima cutting meat ever since I was twelve or thirteen, and I had no idea what his first name was or what his age might be. He had set up a gas grill under one of the small exhaust fans-the fans were still now, but presumably they still gave some ventilation-and by 6.30 p.m. the smell of cooking chicken filled the market. Bud Brown didn't object. It might have been shock, but more likely he had recognized the fact that his fresh meat and poultry wasn't getting any fresher. The chicken smelled good, but not many people wanted to eat. Mr. McVey, small and spare and neat in his whites, cooked the chicken nevertheless and laid the pieces two by two on paper plates and lined them up cafeteria-style on top of the meat counter. I ate as best I could, but Rachel wouldn't even pick at hers.

"You have to eat," I said.

"I'm not hungry," she said, putting the plate aside. "…and I'm vegan." she said finished, almost as an afterthought. I knew that, but it hadn't been at the forefront of my mind at the moment.

"You have to eat _something; _you'll get lightheaded if you don't." She didn't respond, I think she was still in shock about everything that had happened. I myself was only just hanging on to my sanity. But I couldn't let her know that. I needed to keep us alive.

I got up, set my plate down and walked down to the fruits and vegetables aisle. I looked around for a bit until I found what I was looking for, when I did, I grabbed one and went back to sit next to Rachel.

"Here," I said. "At least have one, they're your favorite right?"

"Yeah," she said, with a ghost of a smile on her face. She hesitantly took the peach from my outstretched hand and bit into it. It hurt my heart to see her act that way; she was usually so full of life.

Mr. McVey went on cooking chicken, apparently not minding that only a few people were eating it, happy in the act of cooking. As I think I have said, there are all ways of handling a thing like this. You wouldn't think it would be so, but it is. The mind is a monkey.

Rachel and I sat halfway up the patent- medicines aisle. People were sitting in little groups all over the store. No one except Mrs. Pepper was sitting alone; even Myron and his buddy Jim were together-they were both passed out by the beer cooler.

Six new men were watching the loopholes. One of them was Ollie, gnawing a leg of chicken and drinking a beer. The mop-handle torches leaned beside each of the watch posts, a can of charcoal lighter fluid next to each...but I don't think anyone really believed in the torches the way they had before. Not after that low and terribly vital grunting sound, not after the chewed and blood-soaked clothesline. If whatever was out there decided it wanted us, it was going to have us. It, or they.

"How bad will it be tonight?" Rachel asked. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were sick and scared.

"Rach…I just don't know." Her eyes started glistening and I leaned over and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. It was quickly becoming a habit.

"I'm so worried about my dads," she said, then hesitated before continuing, "they're dead, Quinn. In my heart I'm sure they're dead."

"No, Rach. You don't know any such thing."

"But I feel it's true. Don't you feel anything about your mom? Don't you at least have a...a feeling?"

"No," I said, lying through my teeth.

A strangled sound came from her throat and she clapped a hand to her mouth. Her eyes reflected back the dim, murky light. She bit into her peach again; I think it was just something to keep her mind occupied.

At 8:00 P.m. six new men went on at the loopholes and Ollie came over to where we were sitting.

"How're you guys holdin' up?" he said. He had become accustomed to Rachel's presence but he was still wary around her. I ended up shrugging; I didn't really know how I was. Rachel made a noncommittal noise from where she was, snuggled up against my side eating her peach.

Ollie took a long drink of beer and said, "Things are moving around out there." I looked at him sharply. He looked back levelly.

"I'm not drunk," he said. "I've been trying but haven't been able to make it. I wish I could, Quinn."

"What do you mean, things are moving around out there?"

"I can't say for sure. I asked Walter, and he said he had the same feeling, that parts of the fog would go darker for a minute - sometimes just a little smudge, sometimes a big dark place, like a bruise. Then it would fade back to gray. And the stuff is swirling around. Even Arnie Simms said he felt like something was going on out there, and Arnie's almost as blind as a bat."

"What about the others?"

"They're all out-of-staters, strangers to me," Ollie said. "I didn't ask any of them."

"How sure are you that you weren't just seeing things?" Rachel asked tentatively.

"Sure," he said. He nodded toward Mrs. Pepper, who was sitting by herself at the end of the aisle. None of it had hurt her appetite any; there was a graveyard of chicken bones on her plate. She was drinking either blood or V-8 juice.

"I think she was right about one thing," Ollie said. "We'll find out. When it gets dark, we'll find out." But we didn't have to wait until dark. When it came, we weren't really expecting it. Not that we had expected any of this. Ollie was still sitting with us when one of the men up front gave out a shriek and staggered back from his post, pinwheeling his arms. It was approaching eight-thirty; outside the pearl-white fog had darkened to the dull slaty color of November twilight.

Something had landed on the glass outside one of the loopholes.

_"Oh my Jesus!" _the man who had been watching there screamed. _"Let me out! Let me out of this!" _He tore around in a rambling circle, his eyes starting from his face, a thin lick of saliva atone corner of his mouth glimmering in the deepening shadows. Then he took off straight up the far aisle past the frozen-food cases.

There were answering cries. Some people ran toward the front to see what had happened. Many others retreated toward the back, not caring and not wanting to see whatever was crawling on the glass out there.I started down toward the loophole, Rachel and Ollie by my side. Ollie's hand was in the pocket that held Amanda's gun. Now one of the other watchers let out a cry-not so much of fear as slipped through one of the checkout lanes. Now I could see what had frightened the guy from his post. I couldn't tell what it was, but I could see it. It looked like one of the minor creatures in a Bosch painting-one of his hellacious murals. There was something almost horribly comic about it, too, because it also looked a little like one of those strange creations of vinyl and plastic you can buy for $1.89 to spring on your friends...in fact, exactly the sort of thing Finn had accused me of planting in the storage area.

It was maybe two feet long, segmented, the pinkish color of burned flesh that has healed over. Bulbous eyes peered in two different directions at once from the ends of short, limber stalks. It clung to the window on fat sucker-pads. From the opposite end there protruded something that was either a sexual organ or a stinger. From its back there sprouted oversized, membranous wings, like the wings of a housefly. They were moving very slowly as Rachel and I approached the glass, Ollie a few steps ahead of us. At the loophole to the left of us, where the man had made the disgusted cawing sound, three of the things were crawling on the glass. They moved sluggishly across it, leaving sticky snail trails behind them. Their eyes - if that is what they were - joggled on the end of the finger-thick stalks. The biggest was maybe four feet long. At times they crawled right over each other.

"Look at those goddamn things," Tom Smalley said in a sickened voice. He was standing at the loophole on our right. I didn't reply. The bugs were all over the loopholes now, which meant they were probably crawling all over the building...like maggots on a piece of meat. It wasn't a pleasant image, and I could feel what chicken I had managed to eat now wanting to come up. Someone was sobbing. Mrs. Pepper was screaming about abominations from within the earth. Someone told her gruffly that she'd shut up if she knew what was good for her.

Same old shit.

Ollie took Amanda's gun from his pocket and I grabbed his arm. "Don't be crazy." He shook free.

"I know what I'm doing," he said.

He tapped the barrel of the gun on the window, his face set in a nearly mask-like expression of distaste. The speed of the creatures' wings increased until they were only a blur-if you hadn't known, you might have believed they weren't winged creatures at all.

Then they simply flew away.

Some of the others saw what Ollie had done and got the idea. They used the mop handles to tap on the windows. The things flew away, but came right back. Apparently they had no more brains than your average housefly, either. The near-panic dissolved in a babble of conversation. I heard someone asking someone else what he thought those things would do if they landed on you. That was a question I had no interest in seeing answered. The tapping on the windows began to die away. Ollie turned toward me and started to say something, but before he could do more than open his mouth, something came out of the fog and snatched one of the crawling things off the glass. I think I screamed. I'm not sure.

It was a flying thing. Beyond that I could not have said for sure. The fog appeared to darken in exactly the way Ollie had described, only the dark smudge didn't fade away; it solidified into something with flapping, leathery wings, an albino-white body, and reddish eyes. It thudded into the glass hard enough to make it shiver. Its beak opened. It scooped the pink thing in and was gone. The whole incident took no more than five seconds. I had a bare final impression of the pink thing wiggling and flapping as it went down the hatch, the way a small fish will wiggle and flap in the beak of a seagull. Now there was another thud, and yet another. People began screaming again, and there was a stampede toward the back of the store. Then there was a more piercing scream, one of pain, and Ollie said, "Oh my God, that old lady fell down and they just ran over her."

He ran back through the checkout aisle. I grabbed Rachel's hand and turned to follow, then I saw something that stopped me dead where I was standing. High up and to my right, one of the lawn-food bags was sliding slowly backward. Tom Smalley was right under it, staring out into the fog through his loophole. Another of the pink bugs landed on the thick plate glass of the loophole where Rachel and I had been standing. One of the flying things swooped down and grabbed it. The old woman who had been trampled went on screaming in a shrill, cracked voice. That bag. That sliding bag.

"Smalley!" I shouted. "Look out- heads up!" In the general confusion, he never heard me. The bag teetered, then fell. It struck him squarely on-the head. He went down hard, catching his jaw on the shelf that ran below the show window. One of the albino flying things was squirming its way through the jagged hole in the glass. I could hear the soft scraping sound that it made, now that some of the screaming had stopped. Its red eyes glittered in its triangular head, which was slightly cocked to one side. A heavy, hooked beak opened and closed rapaciously. It looked a bit like the paintings of pterodactyls you may have seen in the dinosaur books, more like something out of a lunatic's nightmare.

I grabbed one of the torches and slam-dunked it into a can of charcoal lighter fluid, tipping it over and spilling a pool of the stuff across the floor. The flying creature paused on top of the lawn-Food bags, glaring around, shifting slowly and malignantly from one taloned foot to the other. It was a stupid creature, I was quite sure of that. Twice it tried to spread its wings, which struck the walls and then folded themselves over its hunched back like the wings of a griffin. The third time it tried, it lost its balance and fell clumsily from its perch, still trying to spread its wings. It landed on Tom Smalley's back. One flex of its claws and Tom's shirt ripped wide open. Blood began to flow.

I was there, less than three feet away; my torch was dripping lighter fluid. I was emotionally pumped up to kill it if I could...and then realized I had no matches to light it with. I had used the last one lighting a cigar for Mr. McVey an hour ago. The place was in pandemonium now. People had seen the thing roosting on Smalley's back, something no one in the world had seen before. It darted its head forward at a questing angle, and tore a chunk of meat from the back of Smalley's neck. I was getting ready to use the torch as a bludgeon when the cloth-wrapped head of it suddenly blazed alight. Dan Miller was there, holding a Zippo lighter with a Marine emblem on it. His face was as harsh as a rock with horror and fury.

Rachel's hand tightened around mine, like she was scared I would leave her alone.

"Kill it," he said hoarsely. "Kill it if you can." Standing beside him was Ollie. He had Amanda's .38 in his hand, but he had no clear shot. The thing spread its wings and flapped them once -apparently not to fly away but to secure a better hold on its prey-and then its leathery-white, membranous wings enfolded poor Smalley's entire upper body. Then the sounds came -mortal tearing sounds that I cannot bear to describe in any detail. All of this happened in bare seconds. Then I thrust my torch at the thing. There was the sensation of striking something with no more real substance than a box kite. The next moment the entire creature was blazing. It made a screeching sound and its wings spread; its head jerked and its reddish eyes rolled with what I most sincerely hope was great agony. It took off with a sound like linen bed sheets flapping on a clothesline in a stiff spring breeze. It uttered that rusty shrieking sound again. Heads turned to follow its flaming, dying course. I think that nothing in the entire business stands in my memory so strongly as that bird-thing blazing a zigzagging course above the aisles of the Federal Supermarket, dropping charred and smoking bits of itself here and there. It finally crashed into the spaghetti sauces, splattering Ragu and Prince and Prima Salsa everywhere like gouts of blood. It was little more than ash and bone. The smell of its burning was high and sickening. And underlying it like a counterpoint was the thin and acrid stench of the fog, eddying in through the broken place in the glass.

For a moment there was utter silence.

We were united in the black wonder of that brightly flaming deathflight. Then someone howled. Others screamed. A hand significantly larger then Rachel's grabbed me. It was Bud Brown. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. His lips were drawn back from his false teeth in a snarl.

"One of those other things," he said, and pointed.

One of the bugs bad come in through the hole and it now perched on a lawn-food bag, housefly wings buzzing-you could hear them; it sounded like a cheap department- store electric fan-eyes bulging from their stalks, its pink and noxiously plump body was aspirating rapidly. I let go of Rachel's death grip reluctantly and moved toward it. My torch was guttering but not yet out. Mrs. Reppler, the third grade teacher, beat me to it. She was maybe fifty-five, maybe sixty. Her body had a tough, dried-out look that always makes me think of beef jerky. She had a can of Raid in each hand like some crazy gunslinger in an existential comedy. She uttered a snarl of anger that would have done credit to a caveman splitting the skull of an enemy. Holding the pressure cans out at the full length of each arm, she pressed the buttons. A thick spray of insect-killer coated the thing. It went into throes of agony, twisting and turning crazily and at last falling from the bags, bouncing off the body of Tom Smalley-who was dead beyond any doubt or question-and finally landing on the floor. Its wings buzzed madly, but they weren't taking it anywhere; they were too heavily coated with Raid. A few moments later the wings slowed, then stopped.

It was dead.

You could hear people crying now, and moaning. The old lady who had been trampled was moaning. And you could hear laughter. The laughter of the damned. Mrs. Reppler stood over her kill, her thin chest rising and falling rapidly. Hatlen and Miller had found one of those dollies that the stock boys use to trundle cases of things around the store, and together they heaved it atop the lawn-food bags, blocking off the wedge-shaped hole in the glass. As a temporary measure, it was a good one. Amanda Dumfries came forward like a sleepwalker. In one hand she held a plastic floor bucket. In the other she held a whisk broom, still done up in its see through wrapping. She bent, her eyes still wide and blank, and swept the dead pink thing - bug, slug, whatever it was-into the bucket. You could hear the crackle of the wrapping on the whisk broom as it brushed the floor. She walked over to the OUT door. There were none of the bugs on it. She opened it a little way and threw the bucket out. It landed on its side and rolled back and forth in ever-decreasing arcs. One of the pink things buzzed out of the night, landed on the floor pail, and began to crawl over it.

Amanda burst into tears.

I walked over and put an arm around her shoulders. My habit apparently wasn't secluded to Rachel.

At one thirty the following morning I was sitting with my back against the white enamel side of the meat counter in a semi-doze. Rachel's head was in my lap. She was solidly asleep. Not far away Amanda Dumfries was sleeping with her head pillowed on someone's jacket. Not long after the flaming death of the bird-thing, Ollie and I had gone back out to the storage area and had gathered up half a dozen of the pads such as the one I'd covered the hamburger man and his daughter with earlier. Several people were sleeping on these. We had also brought back several heavy crates of oranges and pears, and four of us working together had been able to swing them to the tops of the lawn-food bags in front of the hole in the glass. The bird-creatures would have a tough time shifting one of those crates; they weighed about ninety pounds each. But the birds and the bug-like things the birds ate weren't the only things out there. There was the tentacled thing that had taken Norm. There was the frayed clothesline to think about. There was the unseen thing that had uttered that low, guttural roar to think about. We had heard sounds like it since sometimes quite distant-but how far was "distant" through the damping effect of the fog? And sometimes they were close enough to shake the building and make it seem as if the ventricles of your heart had suddenly been loaded up with ice water.

Rachel started in my lap and moaned. I brushed her hair and she moaned more loudly. Then she seemed to find sleep's less dangerous waters again. My own doze was broken and I was staring wide awake again. Since dark, I had only managed to sleep about ninety minutes, and that had been dream-haunted. In one of the dream fragments, it had been the night before again. My mother was standing in front of the picture window, looking out at the silver spinning waterspout that heralded the storm. I tried to get to her, knowing that a strong enough wind could break the window and throw deadly glass darts all the way across the living room. But no matter how I ran, I seemed, to get no closer to her. Then a bird rose out of the waterspout, a gigantic scarlet _oiseau de mort _whose prehistoric wingspan darkened the entire forest from west to east. Its beak opened, revealing a maw the size of the Holland Tunnel. And as the bird came to gobble up mom, a low, sinister voice began to whisper over and over again:_ The_ _Arrowhead Project_..._The Arrowhead Project_..._The_

_Arrowhead Project_...

Not that Rachel and I were the only ones sleeping poorly. Others screamed in their sleep, and some went on screaming after they woke up. The beer was disappearing from the cooler at a great rate. Buddy Eagleton had restocked it once from out back with no comment. Mike Hatlen told me the Sominex was gone. Not depleted but totally wiped out. He guessed that some people might have taken six or eight bottles.

"There's some Nytol left," he said. "You want a bottle, Quinn?" I shook my head and thanked him. And in the last aisle down by Register 5, we had our winos. There were about seven of them, all out-of-staters, except for Lou Tattinger, who ran the Lima Car Wash. Lou didn't need any excuse to sniff the cork, as the saying was. The wino brigade was pretty well anesthetized.

Oh yes-there were also six or seven people who had gone crazy.

Well, crazy isn't exactly the best word; perhaps I just can't think of the proper one. But there were these people who had lapsed into a complete stupor without benefit of beer, wine, or pills. They stared at you with blank and shiny doorknob eyes. The hard cement of reality had come apart in some unimaginable earthquake, and these poor devils had fallen through. In time, some of them might come back. If there was time. The rest of us had made our own mental compromises, and in some cases I suppose they were fairly odd. Mrs. Reppler, for instance, was convinced the whole thing was a dream, or so she said. She spoke with some conviction.

I looked over at Amanda. I was developing an uncomfortably-strong feeling for her, uncomfortable but platonic. She just seemed so alone here, like she needed a friend-someone to comfort her. Her eyes were an incredible, brilliant green...for a while I had kept an eye on her to see if she was going to rake out a pair of contact lenses, but apparently the color was true.

I dozed in and out, then jerked awake more fully around three. Amanda had shifted into a sort of fetal position, her knees pulled up toward her chest, hands clasped between her thighs. She seemed to be sleeping deeply.

I diverted my mind and got thinking about how I had wanted to paint Finn Hudson yesterday. No, nothing as important as a painting, but...just sit him on a log with my water bottle in his hand and sketch his sweaty, tired face and the two wings of his hair sticking up untidily in the back. It could have been a good picture. It took me sixteen years of living with my father to accept the idea that being good would not be good enough. You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think - I did - that God put you on earth to blow your father away. It turned out I wasn't good enough-or at least, he didn't think so. I kept trying to be for longer than I should have, maybe. Without the support of my parents when I was pregnant, I had to sit down and talk to myself about it. The result of that conversation was a belief that my art was no more than a hobby. I hobby that I couldn't really afford back then.

When I moved back in with my mother, it became something that helped me keep my head above water.

The painting that finally made me see that my Art could actually get me out of Lima was one that showed the Federal market, by some stupid coincidence. The perspective was from the far end of the parking lot. In my picture, the parking lot was empty except for a line of Campbell's Beans and Franks cans, each one larger than the last as they marched toward the viewer's eye. The last one appeared to be about eight feet tall. The picture was titled _Beans and False Perspective. _A man from California had caught site of it when I was putting the finishing touches on my front yard. He was apparently a top exec in some company that makes tennis balls and rackets and who knows what other sports equipment seemed to want that picture very badly, and would not take no for an answer in spite of my insistence that I wouldn't sell it.

He began at six hundred dollars and worked his way up to four thousand. He said he wanted it for his study. I would not let him have it, and he went away sorely puzzled. He probably thought it odd that a teenager would turn down that amount of money. Even so, he didn't give up; he left his card in case I changed my mind. I could have used the money-put it in my college fund or something-but I just couldn't sell it. I couldn't sell it because I felt it was the best painting I had ever done and I wanted it to look at after my mother would ask me, with totally unconscious cruelty, when I was going to do something serious.

Then I happened to show it to Ollie Weeks this early summer. He asked me if he could photograph it and run it as an ad one week, and that was the end of my own false perspective. Ollie had recognized my painting for what it was, and by doing so, he forced me to recognize it, too. A perfectly good piece of slick commercial art. No more. And, thank God, no less. I let him do it, and then I called the exec at his home in San Luis Obispo and told him he could have the painting for twenty-five hundred if he still wanted it. He did, and I shipped it UPS to the coast. And since then that voice of disappointed expectation-that cheated child's voice that can never be satisfied with such a mild superlative as good-has fallen pretty much silent. And except for a few rumbles-like the sounds of those unseen creatures somewhere out in the foggy night-it has been pretty much silent ever since. Maybe you can tell me -why should the silencing of that childish, demanding voice seem so much like dying?

Around four o'clock Rachel woke up-partially, at least-and looked around with bleary, uncomprehending eyes.

"Are we still here?"

"Yeah, honey," I said. "We are."

She started to cry with a weak helplessness that was horrible. Amanda woke up and looked at us.

"Hey, kid," she said, solidifying the fact that she was older than us. "Everything is going to look a little better come morning.

"No," Rachel said. "No it won't. It won't."

"Shh," she said. Her eyes met mine over her head. "It's okay."

Rachel squirmed around in my lap until she could look at me. Which she did for some time,

and then slept again.

"Thank you," I said. "For trying, at least."

"She doesn't even know me."

"That doesn't change it."

"So what do you think?" she asked. Her green eyes held mine steadily. "What do you really think?"

"Ask me in the morning."

"I'm asking you now."

I opened my mouth to answer and then Ollie Weeks materialized out of the gloom like something from a horror tale. He had a flashlight with one of the ladies' blouses over the lens, and he was pointing it toward the ceiling. It made strange shadows on his haggard face.

"Quinn," he whispered.

Amanda looked at him, first startled, then scared again.

"Ollie, what is it?" I asked.

"Quinn," he whispered again. Then: "Come on. Please."

"I don't want to leave Rachel, she just went to sleep."

"I'll stay with her," Amanda said. "You better go. Then, in a lower voice: "Jesus, this is

never going to end."

**oO0Oo**

**AN: Let me address this now before it gets out of hand: QUINN'S INTEREST IN AMANDA IS PURELY PLATONIC! Okay? Awesome.**

**I told you the updates wouldn't take long anymore! This story probably only has a few more chapters left. Big-huge THANK YOU to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, it's the most reviews a single chapter has gotten so far just…THANK YOU AND YOUR AWESOMENESS! You made my day. Every single one of you.**

**And to address Kurt's death, it was actually planned since I began this story, so was Finn's (because I hate Finn [not Kurt, he was collateral damage sorryyyyy] and he will probably end up dead in all my stories). Sorry if it made you sad. :[**

**Also, to the Anon who freaked out because they watched the movie version: that wasn't Stephen King's original ending. The director took a lot of liberties with the story, one of which was that horrifyingly cruel ending. So, don't worry.**

**Thoughts?**


	8. What Happened to the Soldiers

**Trigger Warning: Suicide.**

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 8: What Happened to the Soldiers**

**Quinn's POV:**

I went with Ollie. He was headed for the storage area. As we passed the cooler, he grabbed a beer.

"Ollie, what is it?"

"I want you to see it."

He pushed through the double doors. They slipped shut behind us with a little backwash of air. It was cold. I didn't like this place, not after what had happened to Norm. A part of my mind insisted on reminding me that there was still a small scrap of dead tentacle lying around someplace. Ollie led the blouse drop from the lens of his light. He trained it overhead. At first I had an idea that someone had hung a couple of mannequins from one of the heating pipes below the ceiling. That they had hung them on piano wire or something, a kid's Halloween trick. Then I noticed the feet, dangling about seven inches off the cement floor. There were two piles of kicked-over cartons. I looked up at the faces and a scream began to rise in my throat because they were not the faces of department-store dummies. Both heads were cocked to the side, as if appreciating some horribly funny joke, a joke that had made them laugh until they turned purple. Their shadows. Their shadows thrown long on the wall behind them. Their tongues. Their protruding tongues. They were both wearing uniforms. They were the kids we had noticed earlier and had lost track of along the way, the army brats from- The scream. I could hear it starting in my throat as a moan, rising like a police siren, and then Ollie gripped my arm just above the elbow.

"Don't scream, Quinn. No one knows about this but you and me. And that's how I want to keep it."

Somehow I bit it back.

"Those army kids," I managed.

"From the Arrowhead Project," Ollie said. "Sure"

Something cold was thrust into my hand. The beer can. "Drink this. You need it." I drained the can completely dry.

Ollie said, "I came back to see if we had any extra cartridges for that gas grill Mr. McVey has been using. I saw these guys. The way I figure, they must have gotten the nooses ready and stood on top of those two piles of cartons. They must have tied their hands for each other and then balanced each other while they stepped through the length of rope between their wrists. So_...so _that their hands would be behind them, you know. Then this is the way I figure-they stuck their heads into the nooses and pulled them tight by jerking their heads to one side. Maybe one of them counted to three and they jumped together. I don't know."

"It couldn't be done," I said through a dry mouth. But their hands were tied behind them, all right. I couldn't seem to take my eyes away from that.

"It could. If they wanted to bad enough, Quinn, they could."

"But why?"

"I think you know why. Not any of the tourists, the summer people-like that guy Miller but there are people from around here who could make a pretty decent guess.

"The Arrowhead Project?"

Ollie said, "I stand by one of those registers all day long and I hear a lot. All this spring I've been hearing things about that damned Arrowhead thing, none of it good. The black ice on the trees-"

I thought of Bill Giosti leaning in my window, blowing warm alcohol in my face. Not just atoms, but _different _atoms. Now these bodies hanging from that overhead pipe. The cocked heads. The dangling shoes. The tongues protruding like summer sausages. I realized with fresh horror that new doors of perception were opening up inside. New? Not so. Old doors of perception. The perception of a child who has not yet learned to protect itself by developing the tunnel vision that keeps out ninety percent of the universe. Children see everything their eyes happen upon, hear everything in their ears' range. But if life is the rise of consciousness, then it is also the reduction of input.

Terror is the widening of perspective and perception. The horror was in knowing I was swimming down to a place most of us leave when we get out of diapers and into training pants. I could see it on Ollie's face, too. When rationality begins to break down, the circuits of the human brain can overload. Axons grow bright and feverish. Hallucinations turn real: the quicksilver puddle at the point where perspective makes parallel lines seem to intersect is really there; the dead walk and talk; a rose begins to sing.

"I've heard stuff from maybe two dozen people," Ollie said. "Justine Robards. Nick Tochai. Ben Michaelson. You can't keep secrets in small towns. Things get out. Sometimes it's like a spring - it just bubbles up out of the earth and no one has an idea where it came from. You overhear something at the library and pass it on, or at the marina in Harrison. Christ knows where else, or why. But all spring and summer I've been hearing Arrowhead Project, Arrowhead Project."

"But these two," I said. "Christ, Ollie, they're just kids."

"There were kids in Nam who used to take ears. I was there. I saw it."

"But-what would drive them to do this?"

"I don't know. Maybe they knew something. Maybe they only suspected. They must have known people in here would start asking them questions eventually. If there is an eventually."

"If you're right," I said, "it must be something really bad."

"That storm," Ollie said in his soft, level voice. "Maybe it knocked something loose up there. Maybe there was an accident. They could have been fooling around with anything. Some people claim they were messing with high-intensity lasers and masers. Sometimes I hear fusion power. And suppose...suppose they ripped a hole straight through into another dimension?"

"That's bullshit," I said.

"Are they?" Ollie asked, and pointed at the bodies.

"No. The question now is: What do we do?"

"I think we ought to cut them down and hide them," he said promptly. "Put them under a pile of stuff people won't want-dog food, dish detergent, stuff like that. If this gets out, it will only make things worse. That's why I came to you, Quinn. I felt you are the only one I could really trust."

I muttered, "It's like the Nazi war criminals killing themselves in their cells after the war was lost."

"Yeah. I had the same thought."

We fell silent, and suddenly those soft shuffling noises began outside the steel loading door again-the sound of the tentacles feeling softly across it. We drew together. My flesh was crawling.

"Okay," I said.

"We'll make it as quick as we can," Ollie said. His sapphire ring glowed mutely as he moved his flashlight. "I want to get out of here fast."

I looked up at the ropes. They had used the same sort of clothesline Kurt had allowed me to tic around his waist. The nooses had sunk into the puffed flesh of their necks, and I wondered again what it could have been to make both of them go through with it. I knew what Ollie meant by saying that if the news of the double suicide got out, it would make things worse. For me it already had-and I wouldn't have believed that possible. There was a snicking sound. Ollie had opened his knife, a good heavy job made for slitting open cartons. And, of course, cutting rope.

"You or me?" he asked.

I swallowed. "One each."

We did it.

When I got back, Rachel and Amanda were gone. I walked down one of the aisles and a voice said: "Quinn." It was Amanda, standing by the stairs to the manager's office, her eyes like emeralds. "What was it?"

"Nothing," I said.

She came over to me. "You liar," she said.

"It was nothing. A false alarm."

"If that's how you want it." She took my hand. "I've just been up to the office. It's empty and there's a lock on the door." Her face was perfectly calm, but her eyes were lambent, almost feral, and a pulse beat steadily in her throat.

"I don't-"

"I saw the way you looked at me," she said. I was confused on top of nauseas by that point, I couldn't easily forget what I had experience moments prior. My mind was still reeling.

"What?" she had been talking while I'd been lost in thought. The next thing I know we're half way up the narrow flight of stairs, almost at Brown's office. I stopped, what had just happened?

"W-what are you doing?" I asked.

"Just come with me," she said and tugged at my arm.

"Why?" My mind was all over the place. I needed to stop feeling nauseas. I needed to stop picturing those soldiers. I needed to find Rachel.

"I know what'll make you feel better," she said.

"What?" I was confused again. She pushed my against the wall and oh, _oh._

"What the hell?" I exclaimed. She tried to kiss me but I turned my head. "Um, no." I pushed her back.

"Please?" she asked. Had a missed something? Where the hell was this coming from?

"Why would I want to kiss you?" Seriously, I can't remember having given her any indication towards that. I think…

"Please Quinn, I saw the way you looked at me. You even flirted with me repeatedly!"

That's how the rest of the conversation played out, for the most part. I was utterly confused for most of it until she indicated how she had perceived my behavior. She didn't take too kindly to rejection, after I had explained that I had feelings for someone else.

When we came down, some sort of creeping dawn had begun. The blackness outside the loopholes went reluctantly to dull gray, then to chrome, then to the bright, featureless, and _un-sparkling white _of a drive-in movie screen. Mike Hatlen was asleep in a folding chair he had scrounged somewhere. Dan Miller sat on the floor a little distance away, eating a Hostess donut. The kind that's powdered with white sugar.

"Sit down, Ms. Fabray," he invited.

I looked around for Amanda, but she was already halfway up the aisle. She didn't look back and Rachel was nowhere in sight. I sat down.

"Have a donut." He held the box out.

I shook my head. "All that white sugar is death. Worse than cigarettes."

That made him laugh a little bit. "In that case, have two."

I was surprised to find a little laughter left inside me -he had surprised it out, and I liked him for it. I did take two of his donuts. They tasted pretty good.

"I ought to go find Rachel," I said. Miller nodded. "Those pink bugs," he said. "They're all gone. So are the birds. Hank Vannerman said the last one hit the windows around four. Apparently the_..._the wildlife_...is _a lot more active when it's dark."

"You don't want to tell Finn Hudson that," I said. "Or Norm."

He nodded again and didn't say anything for a long time. Then he lit a cigarette and looked at me. "We can't stay here, Ms. Fabray," he said.

"There's food. Plenty to drink."

"The supplies don't have anything to do with it, and you know it. What do we do if one of the big beasties out there decides to break in instead of just going bump in the night? Do we try to drive it off with broom handles and charcoal lighter fluid?"

Of course he was right. Perhaps the fog was protecting us in a way. Hiding us. But maybe it wouldn't hide us for long, and there was more to it than that. We had been in the Federal for eighteen hours, more or less, and I could feel a kind of lethargy spreading over me, not much different from the lethargy I've felt on one or two occasions when I've tried to swim too far. There was an urge to play it safe, to just stay put, to take care of Rachel, to see if the fog wouldn't just lift, leaving everything as it had been. I could see it on the other faces as well, and it suddenly occurred to me that there were people now in the Federal who probably wouldn't leave under any circumstance. The very thought of going out the door after all that had happened would freeze them. Miller had been watching these thoughts cross my face, maybe.

He said, "There were about eighty people in here when that damn fog came. From that number you subtract the bag-boy, Hudson, and the four people that went out with him, and that man Smalley."

"That leaves seventy-three."

And subtracting the two soldiers, now resting under a stack of Purina Puppy Chow bags, it made seventy-one.

"Then you subtract the people who have just opted out," he went on. "There are ten or twelve of those. Say ten. That leaves about sixty-three. _But-" _He raised one sugar-powdered finger. "Of those sixty-three, we've got twenty or so that just won't leave. You'd have to drag them out kicking and screaming."

"Which all goes to prove what?"

"That we've got to get out, that's all. And I'm going. Around noon, I think. I'm planning to take as many people as will come. I'd like you and your friend to come along."

"After what happened to Finn?"

"Hudson went like a lamb to the slaughter. That doesn't mean I have to, or the people who come with me."

"How can you prevent it? We have exactly one gun."

"And lucky to have that. But if we could make it across the intersection, maybe we could get down to the Sportsman's Exchange on Main Street. They've got more guns there than you could shake a stick at."

"That's one 'if' and one 'maybe' too many."

"Fabray," he said, "it's an iffy situation."

That rolled very smoothly off his tongue, but he didn't have someone to watch out for.

"Look, let it pass for now, okay? I didn't get much sleep last night, but I got a chance to think over a few things. Want to hear them?"

"Sure."

He stood up and stretched. "Take a walk over to the window with me."

We went through the checkout lane nearest the bread racks and stood at one of the loopholes. The man who was keeping watch there said, "The bugs are gone." Miller slapped him on the back. "Go get yourself a coffee -and, fella. I'll keep an eye out."

"Okay. Thanks."

He walked away, and Miller and I stepped up to his loophole. "So tell me what you see out there," he said.

I looked.

The litter barrel had been knocked over in the night, probably by one of the swooping bird-things, spilling a trash of papers, cans, and paper shake cups from the Dairy Queen down the road all over the hottop. Beyond that I could see the rank of cars closest to the market fading into whiteness. That was all I could see, and I told him so.

"That blue Chevy pickup is mine," he said. He pointed and I could see just a hint of blue in the fog. "But if you think back to when you pulled in yesterday, you'll remember that the parking lot was pretty jammed, right?"

I glanced back at my Passat and remembered I had only gotten the space close to the market because someone else had been pulling out. I nodded.

Miller said, "Now couple something else with that fact, Fabray. Hudson and his four...what did you call them?"

"Flat-Earthers."

"Yeah, that's good. Just what they were. They go out, right? Almost the full length of that clothesline. Then we heard those roaring noises, like there was a goddamn herd of elephants out there. Right?"

"It didn't sound like elephants," I said. "It sounded like-" _Like something from the primordial ooze _was the phrase that came to mind, but I didn't want to say that to Miller,not after he had clapped that guy on the back and told him to go get a coffee-and likethe coach jerking a player from the big game. I might have said it to Ollie, but not toMiller. "I don't know what it sounded like," I finished lamely.

"But it sounded _big."_

"Yeah." It had sounded pretty fucking big.

"So how come we didn't hear cars getting bashed around? Screeching metal? Breaking

glass?"

"Well, because-" I stopped. He had me. "I don't know."

Miller said, "No way they were out of the parking lot when whatever-it-was hit them. I'll tell you what I think. I think we didn't hear any cars getting around because a lot of them might be gone, just...gone. Fallen into the earth, vaporized, you name it. Strong enough to splinter these beams and twist them out of shape and knock stuff off the shelves. And the town whistle stopped at the same time." I was trying to visualize half the parking lot gone. Trying to visualize walking out there and just coming to a brand-new drop in the land where the hottop with its neat yellow lined parking slots left off. A drop, a slope...or maybe an out-and-out precipice falling away into the featureless white fog...

After a couple of seconds I said, "If you're right, how far do you think you're going to get in your pickup?"

"I wasn't thinking of my truck. I was thinking of your Volkswagen."

That was something to chew over, but not now. "What else is on your mind?"

Miller was eager to go on. "The pharmacy next door, that's on my mind. What about that?"

I opened my mouth to say I didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about, and then shut it with a snap. The Lima Pharmacy had been doing business when we drove in yesterday. Not the laundromat, but the drugstore had been wide open, the doors chocked with rubber doorstops to let in a little cool air-the power outage had killed their air conditioning, of course. The door to the pharmacy could be no more than twenty feet from the door to the Federal market. So why…

"Why haven't any of those people turned up over here?" Miller asked for me. "It's been eighteen hours. Aren't they hungry? They're sure not over there eating Dristan and Stayfree Mini-pads."

"There's food," I said. "They're always selling food items on special. Sometimes it's animal crackers, sometimes it's those toaster pastries, all sorts of things. Plus the candy rack."

"I just don't believe they'd stick with stuff like that when there's all kinds of stuff over here."

"What are you getting at?"

"What I'm getting at is that I want to get out but I don't want to be dinner for some refugee from a grade-B horror picture. Four or five of us could go next door and check out the situation in the drugstore. As sort of a trial balloon."

"That's everything?"

"No, there's one other thing."

"What's that?"

"Her," Miller said simply, and jerked his thumb toward one of the middle aisles. "That crazy cunt. That witch."

It was Mrs. Pepper he had jerked his thumb at. She was no longer alone; two women had joined her. From their bright clothes I guessed they were probably tourists or summer people, ladies who had maybe left their families to "just run into town and get a few things" and were now eaten up with worry over their husbands and kids. Ladies eager to grasp at almost any straw. Maybe even the black comfort of Mrs. Pepper. Her pantsuit shone out with its same baleful resplendence. She was talking, gesturing, her face hard and grim. The two ladies in their bright clothes (but not as bright as Mrs. Pepper's pantsuit, no, and her gigantic satchel of a purse was still tucked firmly under one doughy arm) were listening raptly.

"She's another reason I want to get out, Fabray. By night she'll have six people sitting with her. If those pink bugs and the birds come back tonight, she'll have a whole congregation sitting with her by tomorrow morning. Then we can start worrying about who she'll tell them to sacrifice to make it all better. Maybe me, or you, or that guy Hatlen. Maybe your _friend_."

"That's idiocy," I said. But was it? The cold chill crawling up my back said not necessarily. Mrs. Pepper's mouth moved and moved. The eyes of the tourist ladies were fixed on her wrinkled lips. Was it idiocy? I thought of the dusty stuffed animals drinking at their looking-glass stream. Mrs. Pepper had power. Even my mother, normally hardheaded and straight-from-the-shoulder, invoked the old lady's name with unease.

_That crazy cunt, _Miller had called her. _That witch._

"The people in this market are going through a section-eight experience for sure," Miller said.

He gestured at the red-painted beams framing the show-window segments...twisted and splintered and buckled out of shape. "Their minds probably feel like those beams look. Mine sure as shit does. I spent half of last night thinking I must have flipped out of my gourd, that I was probably in a straitjacket, raving my head off about bugs and dinosaur birds and tentacles and that it would all go away just as soon as the nice orderly came along and shot a wad of Thorazine into my arm." His small face, trained and white. He looked at Mrs. Pepper and then back at me.

"Tell you it might happen. As people get flakier she's going to look better and better to some of them. And I don't want to be around if that happens." Mrs. Pepper's lips, moving and moving. Her tongue dancing around her old lady's snaggle teeth. She did look like a witch. Put her in a pointy black hat and she would be perfect. What was she saying to her two captured birds in their bright summer plumage? Arrowhead Project? Black Spring the Abominations from cellars of the earth? Human sacrifice? Bullshit. All the same.

"So what do you say?"

"I'll go this far," I answered him. "We'll try going over to the drug. You, me, Ollie if he wants to go, one or two others, Then we'll talk it over again." Even that gave me the feeling of walking out over an impossible drop on a narrow beam. I wasn't going to help Rachel by killing myself. On the other hand, I wasn't going to help her by just sitting on my ass, either. Twenty feet to the drugstore. That wasn't so bad.

"When?" he asked.

"Give me an hour."

"Sure," he said.

**oO0Oo**

**AN: I had to change more than usual and take out an entire scene (which is why it's shorter than most) in this chapter because in the original book (in the movie, it wasn't even brushed upon) the main character had ended up fucking Amanda in Brown's office, even though he was married. When I started writing this, I knew this scene would come up but I couldn't figure out what to do with it because…Faberry. So I made Quinn's interest in Amanda platonic, like a friend but that didn't change Amanda's thoughts. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of you who appreciated the scene change (at least I hope), I know I did. Sorry if it seemed a little…weird.**

**Thoughts?**


	9. The Expedition to the Pharmacy

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 9: The Expedition to the Pharmacy**

**Quinn's POV:**

Rachel seemed better this morning; she had eaten two peaches and a bag of trail mix. I didn't know how I was going to tell her, so I stopped thinking and just _told her_.

We sat with Amanda (who was surprisingly cordial after what happened) and Hattie Turman and drank Gatorade from paper cups and I told her I was going over to the drugstore with a few other people.

"I'm going with you," she said immediately. I was hit with an immediate sense of panic.

"No Rach-"

"Quinn, listen to me," she said, she leaned in closer. She took my hand and for the first time I took it back. She took it again.

"Quinn, we have to get out of here sooner or later. You see that, don't you?" I shifted my eyes to the ground and drank my Gatorade slowly and without relish.

"I do."

"Quinn, look at me." I did, though reluctantly. "When we do decide to leave I want to be adequately prepared for what we might face," she sighed warily and continued, "I'm tired of being scared Quinn, and I know it's inevitable that we will be, but I don't want to be so scared that I can't help. I want to help Quinn; and if it means going on this reconnaissance mission with you then that's what I'll do." I sighed. She had a point. If I expected her to come with us when we left then I needed to stop shielding her. She needed to know what we were up against too.

"Okay," I said after a beat. She beamed and I couldn't help but smile.

"Maybe we'll find something useful," she said.

"Don't build people's hopes up, Ms. Berry," Mrs. Turman said.

"What the hell," I snapped at her, "we've got to hope for something."

She dropped her eyes. "Yes. I suppose we do." I happened to glance down the middle aisle and saw Mrs. Pepper there. She had gained a third listener, a man with a grizzled cheek and a mean and rolling bloodshot eye. His haggard brow and shaking hands almost screamed the word hangover. It was none other than Myron LaFleur. The guy who had felt no compunction at all about sending a boy out to do a man's job.

_That crazy cunt. That witch._

Rachel and I walked down to the front of the store-but not down the housewares aisle. We didn't want to fall under her eye.

Three-quarters of the way down, Amanda caught up with us. Rachel eyed her warily. "Do you really have to do this?" she asked.

"Yes, I think so."

"Forgive me if I say it sounds like so much macho bullshit to me." There were spots of color high on her cheeks and her eyes were greener than ever. She was highly - no, royally -pissed.

I recapped my discussion with Dan Miller. The riddle of the cars and the fact that no one from the pharmacy had joined us didn't move her much. The business about Mrs. Pepper did.

"He could be right," she said.

"Do you really believe that?" Rachel asked.

"I don't know. There's a poisonous feel to that woman and if people are frightened badly enough for long enough, they'll turn to anyone that promises a solution."

"But a human sacrifice, Amanda?" I asked.

"The Aztecs were into it," she said evenly. "Listen, Quinn. You come back. If anything happens..._anything_...you come back. Cut and run if you have to. Not for me, what happened last night…I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that, but that was last night. Just come back." I felt Rachel shift uneasily beside me.

"We will."

"I wonder," she said, and now she looked so haggard and old. It occurred to me that most of us looked that way. But not Mrs. Pepper. Mrs. Pepper looked younger somehow, and more vital. As if she had come into her own. As if...as if she were thriving on it.

Rachel and I walked further into the store looking for Ollie.

"What happened last night?" Rachel asked.

"She tried to kiss me," I said as evenly as I could.

"Oh," she said. I couldn't really put my finger on it but there was something in her voice that made me start stuttering like an idiot trying to explain.

"I-I mean, I didn't let her. She just…tried," I ended lamely.

"Okay," she said and I could swear she sounded relieved. I put it off as wishful thinking.

We didn't get going until 9:30 A.M. Seven of us went: Ollie, Dan Miller, Mike Hatlen, Myron LaFleur's erstwhile buddy Jim (also hung-over, but seemingly determined to find some way to atone), Buddy Eagleton, myself. The seventh, of course, was Rachel. Miller and Hatlen tried halfheartedly to talk her out of coming. I think they were judging her by her stature. She would have none of it. I didn't even try. I suspected she might be more competent than any of us anyway, except maybe for Ollie. She was carrying a small canvas shopping basket, and it was loaded with an arsenal of Raid and Black Flag spray cans, all of them uncapped and ready for action. In her free hand she held a Spaulding Jimmy Connors tennis racket from a display of sporting goods in Aisle 2.

"What you gonna do with that, Rachel?" Jim asked.

"I don't know," she said in a low, raspy, competent voice that sent shivers down my spine. "But it feels right in my hand."

She looked him over closely, and her eyes were cold. "Jim Grondin, isn't it? Didn't you go to school with my father?"

Jim's lips stretched in an uneasy egg-suck grin. "Yes'm. Me and my sister Pauline."

"Too much to drink last night?"

Jim, who towered over her and probably outweighed her by one hundred pounds, blushed to the roots of his American Legion crewcut. "Aw, no-"

She turned away curtly, cutting him off. "I think we're ready," she said.

All of us had something, although you would have called it an odd assortment of weapons. Ollie had Amanda's gun, Buddy Eagleton had a steel pinchbar from out back somewhere. I had a broom handle.

"Okay," Dan Miller said, raising his voice a bit. "You folks want to listen up a minute?"

A dozen people had drifted down toward the OUT door to see what was going on. They were loosely knotted, and to their right stood Mrs. Pepper and her new friends.

"We're going over to the drugstore to see what the situation is there. Hopefully, we'll be able to bring something back to aid Mrs. Clapham." She was the lady who had been trampled yesterday, when the bugs came. One of her legs had been broken and she was in a great deal of pain.

Miller looked us over. "We're not going to take any chances," he said. "At the first sign of anything threatening, we're going to pop back into the market-"

"And bring all the fiends of hell down on our heads!" Mrs. Pepper cried.

"She's right!" one of the summer ladies seconded. "You'll make them notice us! You'll make them come! Why can't you just leave well enough alone?"

There was a murmur of agreement from some of the people who had gathered to watch us go.

I said, "Lady, is this what you call well enough?"

She dropped her eyes, confused.

Mrs. Pepper marched a step forward. Her eyes were blazing. "You'll die out there, Quinn Fabray!" She raised her eyes and raked all of us with them. Buddy Eagleton dropped his eyes and simultaneously raised the pinchbar, as if to ward her off.

"All of you will die out there! Haven't you realized that the end of the world has come? The Fiend has been let loose! Star Wormwood blazes and each one of you that steps out that door will be torn apart! And they'll come for those of us who are left, just as this good woman said! Are you people going to let that happen?" She was appealing to the onlookers now, and a little mutter ran through them. "After what happened to the unbelievers yesterday? It's death! _It's death! It's-"_

A can of peas flew across two of the checkout lanes suddenly and struck Mrs. Pepper on the right breast. She staggered backward with a startled squawk.

Amanda stood forward. "Shut up," she said. "Shut up, you miserable buzzard."

"She serves the Foul One!" Mrs. Pepper screamed. A jittery smile hung on her face.

"What did you do last night, missus? Mother Pepper sees, oh yes, Mother Pepper sees what others miss." But the moment's spell she had created was broken, and Amanda's eyes never wavered.

"Are we going or are we going to stand here all day?" Rachel asked.

And we went. God help us, we went.

Dan Miller was in the lead. Ollie came second, I was last, with Rachel in front of me. I was as scared as I've ever been, I think, and the hand wrapped around my broom handle was sweaty-slick. There was that thin, acrid, and unnatural smell of the fog. By the time I got out the door, Miller and Ollie had already faded into it, and Hatlen, who was third, was nearly out of sight.

_Only twenty feet, _I kept telling myself. _Only twenty feet._

Rachel walked slowly and firmly ahead of me, her tennis racket swinging lightly from her right hand. To our left was a red cinderblock wall. To our right the first rank of cars were looming out of the fog like ghost ships. Another trash barrel materialized out of the whiteness and beyond that was a bench where people sometimes sat to wait their turn at the pay phone. _Only twenty feet, Miller's probably there by now, twenty feet is_ _only ten or twelve paces-_

"Oh my God!" Miller screamed. "Oh dear sweet God, look at this!"

Miller had gotten there, all right.

Buddy Eagleton was ahead of Rachel and he turned to run, his eyes wide and stary. She batted him lightly in the chest with her tennis racket. "Where do you think _you're_ going?" she asked, and that was all the panic there was.

The rest of us drew up to Miller. I took one glance back over my shoulder and saw that the Federal had been swallowed up by the fog. The red cinderblock wall faded to a thin wash pink and then disappeared utterly, probably five feet on the Lima Pharmacy side of the OUT door. I felt more isolated, more simply alone, than ever in my life.

The pharmacy had been the scene of a slaughter.

Miller and I, of course, were very close to it-almost on top of it. All the things in the fog operated primarily by sense of smell. It stood to reason. Sight would have been almost completely useless to them. Hearing a little better, but as I've said, the fog had a way of screwing up the acoustics, making things that were close sound distant and-sometimes-things that were far away sound close. The things in the fog followed their truest sense. They followed their noses. Those of us in the market had been saved by the power outage as much as by anything else. The electric -eye doors wouldn't operate. In a sense, the market had been scaled up when the fog came. But the pharmacy doors...they had been chocked open. The power failure had killed their air conditioning and they had opened the doors to let in the breeze. Only something else had come in as well.

A man in a maroon T-shirt lay face down in the doorway. Or at first I thought his T-shirt was maroon; then I saw a few white patches at the bottom and understood that once it had been all white. The maroon was dried blood. And there was something else wrong with him. I puzzled it over in my mind. Even when Buddy Eagleton turned around and was noisily sick, it didn't come immediately. I guess when something that...that final happens to someone, your mind rejects it at first-unless maybe you're in a war. His head was gone, that's what it was. His legs were splayed out inside the pharmacy doors, and his head should have been hanging over the low step. But his head just wasn't.

Jim Grondin had had enough. He turned away, his hands over his mouth, his bloodshot eyes gazing madly into mine. Then he stumbled and staggered back toward the market. The others took no notice. Miller had stepped inside. Mike Hatlen followed. Rachel stationed herself at one side of the double doors with her tennis racket. Ollie stood on the other side with Amanda's gun drawn and pointing at the pavement.

He said quietly, "I seem to be running out of hope, Quinn."

Buddy Eagleton was leaning weakly against the pay-phone stall like someone who has just gotten bad news from home. His broad shoulders shook with the force of his sobs.

"Don't count us out yet," I said to Ollie. I stepped up to the door. I didn't want to go inside, but something compelled me to keep exploring.

The Lima Pharmacy was a crazy shambles. Paperbacks and magazines were everywhere. There were bottles of medicine littering most surfaces. A small bottle of Pracetamol was almost at my feet, and without thinking, I picked it up and jammed it into my back pocket. Bottles and boxes lay in the aisles. A hand hung over one of the racks. Unreality washed over me. The wreckage...the carnage-that was bad enough. But the place also looked like it had been the scene of some crazy party. It was hung and festooned with what I at first took to be streamers. But they weren't broad and flat; they were more like very thick strings or very thin cables. It struck me that they were almost the same bright white as the fog itself, and a cold chill sketched its way up my back like frost. Not crepe. What? Magazines and books hung dangling in the air from some of them. Mike Hatlen was prodding a strange black thing with one foot. It was long and bristly.

"What the fuck is this?" he asked no one in particular.

And suddenly I knew.

I knew what had killed all those unlucky enough to be in the pharmacy when the fog came. The people who had been unlucky enough to get smelled out. Out-

"Out," I said. My throat was completely dry, and the word came out like a lint-covered bullet. "Get out of here."

Ollie looked at me. "Quinn–"

"They're spiderwebs," I said. And then two screams came out of the fog. The first of fear, maybe. The second of pain. It was Jim. If there were dues to be paid, he was paying them.

"Get out!" I shouted at Mike and Dan Miller.

Then something looped out of the fog. It was impossible to see it against that white background, but I could hear it. It sounded like a bullwhip that had been halfheartedly flicked. And I could see it when it twisted around the thigh of Buddy Eagleton's jeans. He screamed and grabbed for the first thing handy, which happened to be the telephone. The handset flew the length of its cord and then swung back and forth.

_"Oh Jesus that_ _HURTS!" _Buddy screamed.

Ollie grabbed for him, and I saw what was happening. At the same instant I understood why the head of the man in the doorway was missing. The thin white cable that had twisted around Buddy's leg like a silk rope _was sinking into his flesh. _That leg of his jeans had been neatly cut off and was sliding down his leg. A neat, circular incision in his flesh was brimming blood as the cable went deeper. Ollie pulled him hard. There was a thin snapping sound and Buddy was free. His lips had gone blue with shock. Mike and Dan were coming, but too slowly. Then Dan ran into several hanging threads and got stuck, exactly like a bug on flypaper. He freed himself with a tremendous jerk, leaving a flap of his shirt hanging from the webbing. Suddenly the air was full of those languorous bullwhip cracks, and the thin white cables were drifting down all around us. They were coated with the same corrosive substance. I dodged two of them, more by luck than by skill. One landed at my feet and I could hear a faint hiss of bubbling hottop.

Another floated out of the air and Rachel calmly swung her tennis racket at it, she seemed damn well over her fears or maybe she was in denial? I'd like to think it was the fear thing. The thread stuck fast, and I heard a high-pitched _twing!_ _twing! twing! _as the corrosive ate through the racket's strings and snapped them. It sounded like someone rapidly plucking the strings of a violin. A moment later a thread wrapped around the upper handle of the racket and it was jerked into the fog.

"Get back!" Ollie screamed.

We got moving. Ollie had an arm around Buddy. Dan Miller and Mike Hatlen were on each side of Rachel. The white strands of web continued to drift out of the fog, impossible to see unless your eye could pick them out against the red cinderblock background. One of them wrapped around Mike Hatlen's left arm. Another whipped around his neck in a series of quick winding-up snaps. His jugular went in a jetting, jumping explosion and he was dragged away, head lolling. One of his Bass loafers fell off and lay there on its side. Buddy suddenly slumped forward, almost dragging Ollie to his knees. "He's passed out, Quinn! Help me!"

I grabbed Buddy around the waist and we pulled him along in a clumsy, stumbling fashion. Even in unconsciousness, Buddy kept his grip on his steel pinchbar. The leg that the strand of web had wrapped around hung away from his body at a terrible angle. Rachel had turned around.

"Behind you!" she screamed.

As I started to turn, one of the web-strands floated down on top of Dan Miller's head. His hands beat at it, tore at it. One of the spiders had come out of the fog from behind us. It was the size of a big dog. It was black with yellow piping. _Racing stripes, _I thought crazily. Its eyes were reddish-purple, like pomegranates. It strutted busily toward us on what might have been as many as twelve or fourteen jointed legs. It was no ordinary earthly spider blown up to horror-movie size; it was something totally different, perhaps not really a spider at all. Seeing it Mike Hatlen would have understood what that bristly black thing he had been prodding at in the pharmacy really was.

It closed in on us, spinning its webbing from an oval-shaped orifice on its upper belly. The strands floated out toward us in what was nearly a fan shape. Looking at this nightmare, so like the death-black spiders brooding over their dead flies and bugs in trees, I felt my mind trying to tear completely loose from its moorings. I believe now that it was only the thought of Rachel that allowed me to keep any semblance of sanity. I was making some sound. Laughing. Crying. Screaming. I don't know. But Ollie was like a rock. He raised Amanda's pistol as calmly as a man on a target range and emptied it in spaced shots into the creature at point-blank range.

Whatever hell it came from, it wasn't invulnerable. A black ichor splattered from its body and it made a terrible mewling sound, so low it was more felt than heard, like a bass note from a synthesizer. Then it scuttered back into the fog and was gone. It might have been a phantasm from a horrible drug-dream...except for the puddles of sticky black stuff it had left behind. There was a clang as Buddy finally dropped his steel pinchbar.

"He's dead," Ollie said. "Let him go, Quinn. The fucking thing got his femoral artery, he's dead. Let's get the Christ out of here." His face was once more running with sweat and his eyes bulged from his big round face. One of the web-strands floated easily down on the back of his hand and Ollie swung his arm, snapping it. The strand left a bloody weal.

Rachel screamed again, and we turned toward her. Another of them had come out of the fog and had wrapped its legs around Dan Miller in a mad lover's embrace. He was striking at it with his fists. As I bent and picked up Buddy's pinchbar, the spider began to wrap Dan in its deadly thread, and his struggles became a grisly, jittering death dance. Rachel walked toward the spider with a can of Black Flag insect repellent held outstretched in one hand. The spider's legs reached for her. She pressed the button and a cloud of the stuff jetted into one of its sparkling, jewel-like eyes. That low-pitched mewling sound came again. The spider seemed to shudder all over and then it began to lurch backward, hairy legs scratching at the pavement. It dragged Dan's body, bumping and rolling, behind it. Rachel threw the can of bug spray at it. It bounced off the spider's body and clattered to the hottop. The spider struck the side of a small sports car hard enough to make it rock on its springs, and then it was gone.

I got to Rachel, who was swaying on her feet and dead pale. I put an arm around her. "Thank you," she said. "I feel a bit faint."

"That's okay," I said hoarsely.

"I would have saved him if I could."

"I know that."

Ollie joined us. We ran for the market doors, the threads falling all around us. One lit on

Rachel's marketing basket and sank into the canvas side. She tussled grimly for what was hers, dragging back on the strap with both hands, but she lost it. It went bumping off into the fog, end over end.

As we reached the IN door, a smaller spider, no bigger than a cocker spaniel puppy, raced out of the fog along the side of the building. It was producing no webbing; perhaps it wasn't mature enough to do so.

As Ollie leaned one beefy shoulder against the door so Rachel could go through, I heaved the steel bar at the thing like a javelin and impaled it. It writhed madly, legs scratching at the air, and its red eyes seemed to find mine, and mark me...

"Quinn!" Ollie was still holding the door.

I ran in. He followed me.

Pallid, frightened faces stared at us. Seven of us had gone out. Three of us had come back, Ollie leaned against the heavy glass door, barrel chest heaving. He began to reload Amanda's gun. His white assistant manager's shirt was plastered to his body, and large gray sweat-stains had crept out from under his arms.

"What?" someone asked in a low, hoarse voice.

"Spiders," Rachel answered grimly. "The dirty bastards snatched my market basket."

Then she pulled me into a fierce hug and I held on to her tightly.

**oO0Oo**

**AN: I know some of you were annoyed at Rachel's earlier behavior but trust me when I say it was all leading up to this. Two more chapters to go! (I'm relatively certain of that fact).**

**What did you think?**


	10. The Spell of Mrs Pepper

**No Beta.**

**Chapter 10: The Spell of Mrs. Pepper**

**Quinn's POV:**

It was my turn to sleep, and for four hours I remember nothing at all. Rachel told me I talked a lot, and screamed. Once or twice, but I remember no dreams. When I woke up it was afternoon. I was terribly thirsty. Most of the milk had gone over, so I opted for water. I drank a quart.

"Slow down Quinn, you're going to give yourself a stomach ache," Rachel said rubbing my back.

"I'm just...really thirsty," I said in a raspy voice. I coughed hoping it would help.

"Quinn…I actually have something I need to talk to you about," she said. I nodded for her to continue and took another drink of the water gallon.

"I have romantic feelings for you," she said quickly. So quickly in fact that it didn't register at first. Then it did, and I choked on the water I was drinking and (rather ungracefully, might I add) ended up pouring half of the gallon down my shirt.

"This certainly wasn't the response I was hoping for," Rachel mumbled and patted my back as I continued to choke.

The only thing I managed to get out through my coughing fit was _"What?" _Surely I had misheard! There was no way Rachel had feelings for me; it was too good to be true.

"I know you heard me Quinn and by your violent reaction I'm going to assume you don't feel the same way and I've just made a fool of myself- now If you'll excuse me," she said everything incredibly fast again and it took her moving to get up for it to make sense.

"No! Rachel," I pulled her back to sit down and took a few deep breaths to calm my spazzing throat.

"I wasn't-I'm not rejecting…I-I think I misheard you, did you say…that you had romantic feelings for me?" I asked. Really, I had to ask again, I was still in semi-shock.

"Yes and I'd like to think that I was being quite obvious about them what with the entire Amanda debacle," she shook her head as if ridding herself of an annoying thought and continued at light speed. "I've had them for a while now. You were part of the reason why I didn't get back together with Finn. Actually you were the reason that I was with him in the first place because I thought that the only way you would notice me was by his noticing of me and it was true for the most part. But that's an entirely different story so yes, Quinn I do have feelings for you. The romantic kind."

"Really?" She rolled her eyes.

"I said yes already, if you're going to reject me can you at least h-" I kissed her. Just a peck but it was enough to make me feel dizzy with elation and stop her from putting herself down.

"I...I have um, romantic feelings for you too," I said though clearly not as eloquently as she had. She was blushing beautifully and looking at me disbelievingly. My face felt a little _too _hot, so I guess I was too. It wasn't all rainbows and butterflies from then on like I'd once imagined it to be, the situation we were in didn't allow it to be.

Amanda came over to where Rachel and I were before anything more could be said. The old man who had offered to make a try for the shotgun in the trunk of his car was with her-Cornell, I remembered. Ambrose Cornell. Mrs. Turman was sitting close by, I only then noticed.

"How are you?" he asked.

"All right." But Rachel and I needed to talk more in depth about _things,_ I was still thirsty, my head ached and my lips wouldn't stop tingling from the kiss. Most of all, I was scared. I slipped an arm around Rachel, she cuddled closer and I almost forgot what was happening and where we were and enjoyed the moment.

Almost.

I looked from Cornell to Amanda. "What's up?"

Amanda said, "Mr. Cornell is worried about that Mrs. Pepper. So am I."

Mrs. Turman got up and walked away. We didn't stop her.

"What about Mrs. Pepper?" I asked.

"She's stirrin things up," Cornell said. He looked at me with an old man's grimness.

"I think we got to put a stop to it. Just about any way we can." Amanda said. "There are almost a dozen people with her now. It's like some crazy kind of a church service."

I remembered talking with Ollie some time ago. We had been talking about the bulge in popularity of books concerning themselves with the supernatural. He pointed out that in the forties _Weird_ _Tales _had only been able to pay a pittance, and that in the fifties it went broke. When the machines fail, he had said, when the technologies fail, when the conventional religious systems fail, people have got to have something. Even a zombie lurching through the night can seem pretty cheerful compared to the existential comedy/horror of the ozone layer dissolving under the combined assault of a million fluorocarbon spray cans of deodorant.

We had been trapped here for twenty-six hours and we hadn't been able to do diddly-shit. Our one expedition outside had resulted in fifty-seven percent losses. It wasn't so surprising that Mrs. Pepper had turned into a growth stock.

"Has she really got a dozen people?" Rachel asked.

"Well, only eight," Cornell said. "But she never shuts up! It's like those ten-hour speeches Castro used to make. It's a goddamn filibuster."

Eight people. Not that many, not even enough to fill up a jury box. But I understood the worry on their faces. It was enough to make them the single largest political force in the market, especially now that Dan and Mike were gone. The thought that the biggest single group in our closed system was listening to her rant on about the pits of hell and the seven vials being opened made me feel pretty damn claustrophobic.

"She's started talking about human sacrifice again," Amanda said. "Bud Brown came over and told her to stop talking that drivel in his store. Two of the men that are with her-one of them was that man Myron LaFleur-told him he was the one who better shut up because it was still a free country. He wouldn't shut up and there was a...well, a shoving match, I guess you'd say."

"Brown got a bloody nose," Cornell said. "They mean business."

I said, "Surely not to the point of actually killing someone?"

Cornell said softly, "I don't know how far they'll go if that fog doesn't let up. But I don't want to find out. I intend to get out of here."

"Easier said than done." But something had begun to tick over in my mind. _Scent. _That was the key. We had been left pretty much alone in the market. The bugs might have been attracted to the light, as more ordinary bugs were. The birds had simply followed their food supply. But the bigger things had left us alone unless we unbuttoned for some reason. The slaughter in the Lima Pharmacy had occurred because the doors had been left chocked open-I was sure of that. The thing or things that had gotten Finn and his party had sounded as big as a house, but it or they hadn't come near the market. And that meant that maybe...

Suddenly I wanted to talk to Ollie. I needed to talk to him.

"I intend to get out or die trying," Cornell said. "I got no plans to spend the rest of the summer in here."

"There have been four suicides," Amanda said suddenly.

"What?" The first thing to cross my mind, in a semi-guilty flash, was that the bodies of the soldiers had been discovered.

"Pills," Cornell said shortly. "Me and two or three other guys carried the bodies out back." I had to stifle a shrill laugh. We had a regular morgue going back there.

"It's thinning out," Cornell said. "I want to get gone."

"You won't make it to your car. Believe me."

"Not even to that first rank? That's closer than the drugstore." I didn't answer him. Not right then.

Rachel and I found Ollie holding up the beer cooler and drinking a Busch. His face was impassive but he also seemed to be watching Mrs. Pepper. She was tireless, apparently. And she was indeed discussing human sacrifice again, only now no one was telling her to shut up. Some of the people who had told her to shut up yesterday were either with her today or at least willing to listen-and the others were outnumbered.

"She could have them talked around to it by tomorrow morning," Ollie remarked. "Maybe not...but if she did, who do you think she'd single out for the honor?"

Bud Brown had crossed her. So had Amanda. There was the man who had struck her.

And then, of course, there was me.

"Ollie," I said, "I think maybe half a dozen of us could get out of here. I don't know how far we'd get, but I think we could at least get out."

"How?"

I laid it out for him. It was simple enough. If we dashed across to my VW and piled in, they would get no human scent. At least not with the windows rolled up.

"But suppose they're attracted to some other scent?" Ollie asked. "Exhaust, for instance?"

"Then we'd be cooked," I agreed.

"Motion," he said. "The motion of a car through fog might also draw them, Quinn."

"I don't think so. Not without the scent of prey. I really believe that's the key to getting away."

"But you don't know."

"No, not for sure."

"Where would you want to go?"

"First? Home. To get my mom."

"Quinn-"

"All right. To check. To be sure." I felt Rachel give my hand a squeeze. It was strange; I hadn't noticed she'd been holding it in the first place. It calmed me, if only a little.

"The things out there could be everyplace, Quinn. They could get you the minute you stepped out of your car into your dooryard."

"If that happened, the car would be yours." I felt Rachel shift uneasily at my side and tried doing what she had, I squeezed her hand comfortingly and it seemed to work. Ollie finished his Busch and dropped the can back into the cooler, where it clattered among the empties. The butt of Amanda's gun protruded from his pocket.

"South?" He asked, meeting my eyes.

"Yeah, I would," I said. "Go south and try to get out of the fog. Try like hell."

"How much gas you got?"

"Almost full."

"Have you thought that it might be impossible to get out?" I had. Suppose what they had been fooling with at the Arrowhead Project had pulled this entire region into another dimension as easily as you or I would turn a sock inside out?

"It had crossed my mind," I said, "but the alternative seems to be waiting around to see who Mrs. Pepper taps for the place of honor."

"Were you thinking about today?"

"No, it's afternoon already and those things get active at night. I was thinking about tomorrow, very early."

"Who would you want to take?"

"Me and you and Rachel. Hattie Turman. Amanda Dumfries. That old guy Cornell and Mrs. Reppler. Maybe Bud Brown too. That's eight, but we can all most likely squash together."

He thought it over. "All right," he said finally. "We'll try. Have you mentioned this to anyone else?"

"No, not yet."

"My advice would be not to, not until about four tomorrow morning. I'll put a couple of bags of groceries under the checkout nearest the door. If we're lucky we can sneak out before anyone knows what's happening." His eyes drifted to Mrs. Pepper again. "If she knew, she might try to stop us."

"You think so?" Rachel asked.

Ollie got another beer. "I think so," he said.

That afternoon passed in a kind of slow motion. Darkness crept in, turning the fog to that dull chrome color again. What world was left outside slowly dissolved to black by eight-thirty. The pink bugs returned, then the bird-things, swooping into the windows and scooping them up. Something roared occasionally from the dark, and once, shortly before midnight, there was a long, drawn-out Aaaaarooooooo! that caused people to turn toward the blackness with frightened, searching faces. It was the sort of sound you'd imagine a bull alligator might make in a swamp. It went pretty much as Miller had predicted. By the small hours, Mrs. Pepper had gained another half dozen souls. Mr. McVey the butcher was among them, standing with his arms folded, watching her. She was totally wound Lip. She seemed to need no sleep. Her sermon, a steady stream of horrors out of Dore, Bosch, and Jonathan Edwards, went on and on, building toward some climax. Her group began to murmur with her, to rock back and forth unconsciously, like true believers at a tent revival. Their eyes were shiny and blank. They were under her spell.

Around 3:00 A.M. (the sermon went on relentlessly, and the people who were not interested had retreated to the back to try to get some sleep) I saw Ollie put a bag of groceries on a shelf under the checkout nearest the OUT door. Half an hour later he put another bag beside it. No one appeared to notice him but me. Rachel, Amanda, and Mrs. Turman slept together by the denuded cold-cuts section. I joined them and fell into an uneasy doze spooning Rachel.

At four-fifteen by my wristwatch, Ollie shook me awake. Cornell was with him, his eyes gleaming brightly from behind his spectacles.

"It's time, Quinn," Ollie said.

A nervous cramp hit my belly and then passed. I shook Rachel awake.

Those remarkable brown eyes opened and looked into mine.

"It's time," I said. Her eyes widened and she suddenly seemed more awake. I woke Amanda next.

"Quinn?" she looked up at me with a confused expression.

"We're going to take a stab at getting out of here. Do you want to come?"

"What are you talking about?"

I started to explain, then woke up Mrs. Turman so I would only have to go through it the once.

"Your theory about scent," Amanda said. "It's really only an educated guess at this point, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"It doesn't matter to me," Hattie said. Her face was white and in spite of the sleep she'd gotten there were large discolored patches under her eyes. "I would do anything-take any chances-just to see the sun again."

_Just to see the sun again._

A little shiver coursed through me. She had put her finger on a spot that was very close to the center of my own fears, on the sense of almost foregone doom that had gripped me since I had seen Norm dragged out through the loading door. You could only see the sun through the fog as a little silver coin. It was like being on Venus. It wasn't so much the monstrous creatures that lurked in the fog; my shot with the pinchbar had shown me they were no Love-craftian horrors with immortal life but only organic creatures with their own vulnerabilities. It was the fog itself that sapped the strength and robbed the will._ Just to see the sun again. _She was right. That alone would be worth going through a lot of hell. I smiled at Hattie and she smiled tentatively back.

"Yes," Amanda said. "Me too."

"I'm with you," Mrs. Reppler said briefly.

We were all together by the meat counter, all but Bud Brown. He had thanked us for the invitation and then declined it. He would not leave his place in the market, he said, but added in a remarkably gentle tone of voice that he didn't blame Ollie for doing so. An unpleasant, sweetish aroma was beginning to drift up from the white enamel case now, a smell that reminded me of the time our freezer went on the fritz. Perhaps, I thought, it was the smell of spoiling meat that had driven Mr. McVey over to Mrs. Pepper's team.

_"-expiation! It's expiation we want to think about now! We have been scourged with whips and scorpions! We have been punished for delving into secrets forbidden by God of old! We have seen the lips of the earth open! We have seen the obscenities of nightmare! The rock will not hide them, the dead tree gives no shelter! And how will it end? What will stop it?"_

_"Expiation!" _shouted good old Myron LaFleur.

"Expiation ... expiation ..." They whispered it uncertainly.

_"Let me hear you say it like you mean it!" _Mrs. Pepper shouted. The veins stood out on her neck in bulging cords. Her voice was cracking and hoarse now, but still full of power. And it occurred to me that it was the fog that had given her that power-the power to cloud men's minds, to make a particularly apt pun-just as it had taken away the sun's power from the rest of us. Before, she had been nothing but a mildly eccentric old woman with an antiques store in a town that was lousy with antiques stores. Nothing but an old woman with a few stuffed animals in the back room and a reputation for _(that witch_..._that cunt)_ folk medicine. It was said she could find water with an applewood stick, that she could charm warts, and sell you a cream that would fade freckles to shadows of their former selves. I had even heard that Mrs. Pepper could be seen (in total confidence) about your love life; that if you were having the bedroom miseries, she could give you a drink that would put the ram back in your rod.

_"EXPIATION!" _they all cried together.

_"Expiation, that's right!" _she shouted deliriously. _"Its expiation gonna clear away this fog! Expiation gonna clear off these monsters and abominations! Expiation gonna drop the scales of fog from our eyes and let us see!" _Her voice dropped a notch. _"And what does the Bible say expiation is? What is the only cleanser for sin in the Eye and Mind of God?"_

_"Blood."_

This time the chill shuddered up through my entire body cresting at the nape of my neck and making the hairs there stiffen. Mr. McVey had spoken that word, Mr. McVey the butcher who had been cutting meat in Lima ever since I was a kid holding my father's hand. Mr. McVey taking orders and cutting meat in his stained whites. Mr. McVey, whose acquaintanceship with the knife was long-yes, and with the saw and cleaver as well. Mr. McVey who would understand better than anyone else that the cleanser of the soul flows from the wounds of the body.

_"Blood_..." they whispered.

Rachel was clutching my hand tightly, her face strained and pale.

"Ollie," I said, "why don't we get out of this loony bin?"

"Right on," he said. "Let's go."

We started down the second aisle in a loose group-Ollie, Amanda, Cornell, Mrs. Turman, Mrs. Reppler, Rachel, and I. It was a quarter to five in the morning and the fog was beginning to lighten again.

"You and Cornell take the grocery bags," Ollie said to me.

"Okay."

"I'll go first. Your car is a four-door, is it?"

"Yeah. It is."

"Okay, I'll open the driver's door and the back door on the same side."

"You and Rachel get in front," Ollie went on. "Shove way over. Mrs. Turman in front, in the middle. Quinn, you behind the wheel. The rest of us will-"

"Where did you think you were going?"

It was Mrs. Pepper.

She stood at the head of the checkout line where Ollie had hidden the bags of groceries. Her pantsuit was a yellow scream in the gloom. Her hair frizzed out wildly in all directions, reminding me momentarily of Elsa Lanchester in _The Bride of Frankenstein._ Her eyes blazed. Ten or fifteen people stood behind her, blocking the IN and OUT doors. They had the look of people who had been in car accidents, or who had seen a UFO land, or who had seen a tree pull its roots up and walk. I cringed internally.

"Going out now, Mrs. Pepper," Ollie said. His voice was curiously gentle. "Stand away, please."

"You can't go out. That way is death. Don't you know that by now?"

"No one has interfered with you," I said. "All we want is the same privilege." She bent and found the bags of groceries unerringly. She must have known what we were planning all along. She pulled them out from the shelf where Ollie had placed them. One ripped open, spilling cans across the floor. She threw the other and it smashed open with the sound of breaking glass. Soda ran fizzing every which way and sprayed off the chrome facing of the next checkout lane.

"These are the sort of people who brought it on!" she shouted. "People who will not bend to the will of the Almighty! Sinners in pride, haughty they are, and stiff-necked! It is from their number that the sacrifice must come! _From their number the blood of expiation!"_ A rising rumble of agreement spurred her on. She was in a frenzy now. Spit flew from her lips as she screamed at the people crowding up behind her: _"It's the girl we want!_ _Grab her! Take her! It's the girl we want!"_

They surged forward, Myron LaFleur in the lead, his eyes blankly joyous. Mr. McVey was directly behind him, his face blank and stolid. I faltered backward, jerking Rachel behind me. I was terrified, but I wouldn't let them get past me.

_"Get them both!_" Mrs. Pepper screamed.

She was an apocalypse of yellow and dark joy. Her purse was still over her arm. She began to jump up and down. _"Get the girl, get the sinners, get them both, get them all,_ _get-"_

A single sharp report rang out.

Everything froze, as if we were a classroom full of unruly children and the teacher had just stepped back in and shut the door sharply. Myron LaFleur and Mr. McVey stopped where they were, about ten paces away. Myron looked back uncertainly at the butcher. He didn't look back or even seem to realize that LaFleur was there. Mr. McVey had a look I had seen on too many other faces in the last two days.

He had gone over.

His mind had snapped.

Myron backed up, staring at Ollie Weeks with widening, fearful eyes. His backing-up became a run. He turned the corner of the aisle, skidded on a can, fell down, scrambled up again, and was gone. Ollie stood in the classic target shooter's position, Amanda's gun clasped in both hands. Mrs. Pepper still stood at the head of the checkout lane. Both of her liver-spotted hands were clasped over her stomach. Blood poured out between her fingers and splashed her yellow slacks. Her mouth opened and closed. Once. Twice. She was trying to talk. At last she made it.

_"You will all die out there," _she said, and then she pitched slowly forward. Her purse slithered off her arm, struck the floor, and spilled its contents. A paper-wrapped tube rolled across the distance between us and struck one of my shoes. Without thinking, I bent over and picked it up. It was a half-used package of Rolaids. I threw it down again. I didn't want to touch anything that belonged to her. The "congregation" was backing away, spreading out, their focus broken. None of them took their eyes from the fallen figure and the dark blood spreading out from beneath her body. "You murdered her!" someone cried out in fear and anger. But no one pointed out that she had been planning something similar for Rachel and me. Ollie was still frozen in his shooter's position, but now his mouth was trembling. I touched him gently. "Ollie, let's go. And thank you."

"I killed her," he said hoarsely. "Damn if I didn't kill her."

"Yes," I said. "That's why I thanked you. Now let's go."

We began to move again.

With no grocery bags to carry - thanks to Mrs. Pepper - I was able to take Rachel's hand. We paused for a moment at the door, and Ollie said in a low, strained, voice, "I wouldn't have shot her, Quinn. Not if there had been any other way."

"Yeah."

"You believe it?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Then let's go."

We went out.

**oO0Oo**

**AN: I'm back! Sorry for the wait, I stupidly misplaced the flash drive (again) where I store all of my writings. I found it while looking for my phone charger (like I always find things when I'm looking for something completely different) under my bed. Anyway, one more chapter! (I think).**

**Sooooo, what did you think?**

**Oh, and I still haven't found my charger. If anyone was curious. :p**


End file.
